Locked and Loaded
by Sophia Bee
Summary: Blair has married Chuck. Dan has run away to Europe. She finds him and he finds out that all is not it seems with Blair Waldorf. CRAZY GG AU. Dan POV. Multiple chapters.
1. Chapter 1

_author note: I know I update quickly, but I don't think I'll be able to with this one. So, apologies ahead of time and I hope you enjoy a little crazy AU multi-chapter fic. Feedback very welcome. ::sophia_

Sometimes he thinks Blair will be the death of him.

After she married Chuck in a huge ceremony and somehow forgot all the things Dan had done for her and hadn't even bothered to even invite him to the wedding, although Dan was actually glad because he wouldn't have gone anyway, he had to get out of New York City.

He goes to Europe and travels around, staying in hostels although Lily had told him he could have enough money to travel in style, but Dan didn't want it. He just wants to be like anyone else, so he carries a sleeping bag and washes his clothes in sinks and sleeps on uncomfortable beds. He sits in cafes drinking coffee and writing frantically in cheap notebooks, then sends them home, asking Rufus to put them in his bedroom and he imagines them lining his bookshelf, waiting for him to come home and convert them into the great American novel.

He doesn't think about her.

Dan had wanted to stop her from marrying Bass, to throw himself at her mercy and declare his undying love, to stand out in the rain, soaking wet, yelling her name, begging her not to make the biggest mistake of her life. Instead he had stayed away because Blair had asked him to when she had told him she was going marry Chuck, and she had tears in her eyes as she said she hoped he could understand this decision one day, that they just weren't meant to be, and the whole interaction had been strangely sad for someone who was returning to the embrace of the love of her life.

Blair was his destiny, and if she couldn't see that then he didn't believe in much of anything anymore, so he had shrugged at her words and tried to hide the fact that his lower lip was trembling like a school boy's and wished that he'd realized that the last time he'd kissed her had actually been the last time he would ever kiss her. Blair blinked at him and they both were silent, and she had this strange look on her face, a strange kind of pain, like maybe she was sad that he didn't beg her to change her mind, and it made Dan want to say something cheesy, like, 'look babe, I'm a lover, not a fighter'. Instead he had sighed and said, 'so this is it' and Blair repeated those words back to him in a resigned tone, statement following question, and she turned and left and Dan watched her walk away until she turned a corner and he could no longer see her figure in the distance.

He doesn't always remember where he is when he wakes up, and sometimes it takes a few minutes for him to identify that it's Paris or Berlin or some pastoral French village where expats settle and live out their lives running bookshops and making cheese. He sits in internet cafes and emails Rufus, asking him to send more of those cheap plain journals to his next destination, and Rufus emails back and asks if he's ever coming home, and Dan replies that he doesn't know, but it's really a lie because he doesn't really have a place to call home anymore.

Home is where the heart is and Dan had given his to Blair. He'd fallen hard for her and if he had thought she'd be open to it he would have asked her to marry him and have his babies and grow old with him, but he'd just settled for being able to be around her and then she'd ripped his heart out and Dan didn't have a home anymore.

So he drifts around, going from town to town, with no particular goal except to stay away as long as possible so he can reduce the possibility of being stuck at some particular boring event having to be subjected to the newly married couple as they make their way around different social circles and Dan would much rather be waking up to the sounds of goat herders in the Swiss Alps then nursing a warm drink and trying to avoid her gaze.

It's much better this way.

Sometimes he thinks Blair will be the death of him. Especially on the day that he wakes up and there is a knock on the door of the rundown London flat he's rented with peeling paint and a sink that has been drip dripping all night long and he opens it expecting to see a stranger staring back at him with a confused look, neither of them expecting the other person revealed with the opening of the door. But it's actually someone he knows and Dan is surprised to find Blair Waldorf standing in the dimly lit hallway and his mouth is hanging open and all thought flees his head.

"How..." Dan blurts out when he can finally find his voice and Blair sounds flip as she tells him that she has her ways, and she breezes past him, smelling like freesia, as haughty as ever. His eyes follow her as she looks around and finally picks an old chair with cracked vinyl to sit down on, and she perches on its edge, glancing around the room, then she looks at him and smiles.

"Chuck is here on business and I thought..."

It's like nothing had ever happened. Blair leaving, marrying Chuck, were just some crazy dream. She's sitting in front of him, looking fresh and dewy, cocking an eyebrow at him and he knows she's about to suggest they head out for a day of art-gazing at the museums and maybe lunch, and Dan wonders how she can just erase the past.

"What the hell?"

His voice is flat, his mouth hangs open, and he sees her blink and for a moment there is sadness in her eyes, then Blair Waldorf is back, smiling and perky.

"I know we didn't leave things on the best of terms."

Code for 'I chose Chuck over you'. Code for 'I married Chuck instead of you'. Code for 'I broke your heart'.

"No we didn't."

Blair sighs a little and that familiar sadness is back and she looks at him in that way that has always eaten away at his defenses, and he feels them start to slip away.

"I can't explain, but I really need your help, and I know I can trust you. I need a friend."

Back to this. Back to friends and being helpful, and Dan knew he should tell her to get out, go to hell, never come back into his life again, but he doesn't.

"I know the timing may seems strange..." Blair continues.

"Very," Dan answers back.

"You just need to trust me."

She said the same words months ago as she was breaking his heart and telling him she was returning to the arms of Chuck Bass. She had held his hands in hers and told him that this was not over yet, and asked if he could he trust her, and Dan had spit out the word no, and he had managed to hold back the giant 'fuck you' that he wanted to add to his response. He should tell her now, say 'fuck you' and turn away, but he doesn't. Because he's the same idiot who fell in love with a woman who would break his heart in the first place.

"What do you want, Blair?" Dan finally asks, his voice wary, although his posture is a little more relaxed now, and he's capitulating against his better judgement.

"Just the National Gallery," she smiles. "I'm in the mood for some old-school. Shave and get dressed."

Dan rubs his chin with his fingers and feels the stubble, then he does something he hasn't done in months. He smiles. It was like Blair breaking up with him and marrying Chuck had never happened, and maybe it actually was a crazy dream, or maybe she would go back to her husband that night and he'd never see her again, but it wasn't the first time Dan had to take what he could get when it came to Blair Waldorf. The end had come so abruptly, one day they were happy and the next she was walking away, it was hard not to be greedy about getting just one more chance to spend time with her, and even if it didn't end with kissing and confessions of love, Dan was glad to add another memory to the only thing he had left of Blair.

He showers quickly and shaves, then buttons up one of the flannel shirts he'd left hanging on the shower curtain, and he sees Blair roll her eyes when he walked out of the bathroom, his hair still damp, and she mutters something about certain things that never change.

"Let's go." Blair snaps, hustling him out the door, and they walk down the creaking old staircase to find a car waiting outside, and Dan isn't surprised because Blair isn't the kind of girl to take the Tube, even for the pure novelty of it. Blair barks at the driver, telling him to head to the National Gallery, then she leans back into the leather seat and smiles at him, and Dan smiles back.

The world works in mysterious ways.

They arrive at the National Gallery and Blair quickly gets out of the car and motions to him to follow her. She's already heading up the steps leading to an impressively large building and Dan quickens his pace to catch up with her. He wants to ask her where the fire is, and this isn't the Blair who used to savor museum visits, lingering to catch every piece, commenting on how things look in different shades of light. He would also say that a building full of stuffy paintings you might find in the collection of someone's rich grandfather wasn't really her taste either, but she had mentioned something about going old school, and Dan isn't feeling like asking a lot of questions at the moment.

Dan catches the door just before it shuts and finds himself in a long room whose peach colored walls are covered in paintings. The ceiling is tiny panes of glass and the filtered light of a cloudy London day has lit the entire room. It's beautiful light for appreciating art. There are doors on all walls of the room, heavy and wood, with glass panes, and he can see more paintings through them, and he thinks they must lead to other galleries. One of them is just swinging shut and he gets a glimpse of Blair through the glass and follows her.

Dan's shoes click on the hardwood and he almost slips on one of the intricate metal grates space evenly across the floor, as he hurries after Blair. When he finds her, she is sitting on a bench in front of a painting, holding still, staring up at it, a drastic change from all the frenetic energy she'd been displaying since they arrived. Dan couldn't shake the feeling that all of this was starting to seem a little strange. He sits down next to Blair and stares up at the painting.

_A Young Woman Standing at a Virginal_, is the title.

"I didn't know you liked, uh," Dan squints and finds the artist's name, "uh, Vermeer."

Blair doesn't say anything. She's still staring at the painting, twisting her hands a little.

"Blair?" Dan asks, putting his hand on her shoulder. She jumps.

"What?" she starts

"Vermeer?"

"Oh, uh, love her."

Dan frowns.

"Him. The artist is a man."

The sound of footsteps approaching echo through the gallery. Blair glances up and Dan feels her tense next to him. He glances up to find an elderly man has materialized next to them. He's standing adjacent to the bench, staring at the same painting. Dan flashes him a slight smile and the man doesn't smile back. Blair is still staring at the painting and suddenly the air feels like its crackling with electricity and Dan isn't quite sure what's going on.

"I much prefer The Girl with the Wineglass," the man says, then coughs a little.

"Not the Girl with the Pearl Earring?" Blair says back, and Dan feels even more confused.

"Too popular." the man answers. He is wearing a black raincoat and he seems to hunch further into it. Then he is leaving, turning and walking away, and Dan and Blair are still sitting there. Blair doesn't move, still staring at the painting, then she turns to him and puts a hand on his arm.

"Do you want to look around," she asks, "I need to go to the ladies room."

Before Dan can answer, Blair stands and turns to walk out of the gallery. Dan is left wondering what the hell is going on, then decides he might as well look at more paintings since that's what t they came to do in the first place. Ten minutes pass, then twenty, and Dan is starting to question what is keeping Blair, when she materializes by his side, and she flashes a brilliant smile at him, and all the strangeness is gone.

"Lunch, Humphrey?" she chirps, "and don't try to eat off my plate like you used to. Disgusting habit."

"We haven't been here that long," Dan stutters, and besides, it's only 1030, but Blair is insistent, saying something about being starving and they had back into the central hall, toward the heavy, ornate doors that will lead outside, and everything seems strangely normal compared to before. They are pushing through the wooden doors with the glass panes, when Blair freezes and pulls him back into the gallery.

"Fuck." she says under her breath.

"What," Dan starts to ask, but Blair puts up a hand and shushes him. This is the moment that Dan notices something different in her eyes. It's fear. Not the kind of schoolgirl fear that arrives when you realize that someone has arrived at the party in the same dress you picked out, but real fear. Blair is scared.

He peers through the glass pane of the door and sees just a man standing in the central hall. He's tall and thin and there is something foreboding about him, then Blair pulls him further back inside the gallery, away from the doors, where they can't be seen as easily.

"Dan." she hisses, keeping her voice low, and he remembers how much he likes when she says his name, but not like this. Not with a frightening urgency. "Do you love me?"

"What the hell?"

Blair is breathing fast and her eyes search his face, and Dan doesn't know how to answer her question. She's married. To Chuck. They're hiding in a gallery a museum in London. A million emotions are clashing together all at once with her words, and he wants to grab her arms and shake her and ask her how she could walk back into his life and do this, but something keeps him from doing any of that. Maybe it's the fear that's still there as she waits for his answer, and he knows that this might be the most serious thing Blair has ever asked him.

"Yes."

Relief washes over her face. She opens her coat and pulls out a black leather folder and shoves it into his hands. She glances around then steps closer.

"Take this. Don't ask any questions. Don't go to your flat, find somewhere else. And whatever you do, whatever happens next, don't follow me. I'll find you later."

"Blair..."

"I know this is kind of," she pauses as if she's not sure what to say next, "um...surprising. Just trust me."

Dan swallows and he's struck mute by what he senses is actually a serious situation. Whatever is happening, this is bigger than Gossip Girl and the scheming that took place on the Upper East Side. Blair is in trouble. He wants to ask her the questions swirling in his head but instead he just nods in agreement and Blair lets out a sigh of relief. Then she is moving even closer to him and reaching up to pull him closer to her and her lips are on his and she's kissing him with urgency, then just as quickly she's breaking away.

"I didn't mean for you to be dragged into this, but it looks like they've found me."

"They?" Dan asks and Blair's eyes widen as if she's said too much. She grabs his arm with her gloved hand.

"Just be careful," she says and with her words she is pressing something into his hand and it's hard and cold and when Dan looks down he finds that he's holding a petite gun.

"What is this," Dan starts, then realizes that his voice has gotten louder, and Blair's hand is clamping over his mouth. She removes her hand and he repeats the words again, but quieter, "what is this?"

"Just in case." Blair smirks, a little of Queen B leaking through. "Hopefully you won't have to use it."

Like he even knows how to use it.

"What the hell, Blair?" Dan hisses as she turns away from him, "are you in the CIA or something."

Blair stops and turns back to him and Dan will never forget the next words that come out of her mouth.

"Actually, yes."

TBC


	2. Chapter 2

Nothing seems quite the same now.

Dan's head has been whirling all day and he keeps putting his hand into the pocket of his coat and his fingers find the gun that he's forgotten about and every time he touches its cold metal he jerks his hand back out, and he's fairly sure being caught with a gun isn't going to be in his best interest. All of a sudden he's acutely homesick and wishing he were at home in the city, because London is feeling claustrophobic and the shadows are no longer benign but threatening, and at least in New York he might be able to find somewhere that find kind of safe.

He's spent the entire day wandering aimlessly, feeling paranoid, seeing nefarious motives in the faces of strangers around him, and he wishes he'd received a little more instruction from Blair.

_Blair._

Jesus fucking christ, Blair Waldorf, a woman of many layers, has hit him with what might be the most bamboozling piece of her puzzle, and Dan can barely process what she's told him as his feet strike the pavement, his eyes dart around looking for danger in every corner and alleyway.

Fucking CIA.

It's like he's been plunged into some bad teen-oriented television show featuring an unusual girl-spy, and he's not sure how a socialite from the Upper East Side ended up packing heat and running from the bad guys in a foreign country. More than that, he's not sure how he ended up tangled up in all of this.

Today had started out so normal. Or at least it had started out from the vantage of Dan's new version of normal, waking up alone, trying to figure out where his next destination might be, a cup of instant coffee he'd let get lukewarm, the dreary flat. Now it was all topsy turvy and strange and he didn't know what to make of it.

Everything was so strange that Dan had almost forgotten that Blair had kissed him. It had become the least interesting moment of his day, and under any other circumstances he might have enough wherewithal to contemplate the fact that something about her marriage to Chuck was clearly very off if she was macking on her ex-boyfriend in the middle of a museum, let alone that he most likely didn't know about his wife's secret career.

The sun is setting and Dan finds himself in a pub nursing a warm pint of beer while some rowdy folks watch a football game. She said she'd find him, but it's been hours now, and now that some of the novelty of the morning has worn off, he's actually starting to get worried. He has no idea what depth of trouble Blair might be in, or how seriously the CIA takes a girl from Manhattan with a penchant for code breaking and scheming. Maybe they just need her to take down the wives of dignitaries and ambassadors, to send them warnings about wearing tights-as-pants or last year's Prada. Maybe there is a unit that concerns itself with things that are the equivalent of Gossip Girl blasts and the glamorous lives of the well-to-do. But Dan didn't think so, because he'd caught a glimpse of the man in the museum, the one that had caused fear to rise in Blair's eyes.

He was tall with a jutting, angular face, his hair cut close to his scalp and the kind of look on his face that might make you walk on the other side of the street if you happened to have a passing encounter. Dan remember that he had a long, white scar running down one side of his face, making it look like just a little off, a little jarring. Menacing would be a good word to describe him, and Dan thought if he ever made it back to the flat where his journal was lying on the bedside table, he would use that word to describe him when writing about his day.

Blair had told him to hang back, to give her a few minutes then walk past them, keep his face neutral, eyes forward, pretend he didn't know her. No matter what, she'd said forcefully, and Dan had been overcome with a sudden sense of worry, and Blair had put her hand on his arm and told him firmly that she could take care of herself. Considering that she was packing heat as well as lipstick, Dan believed her.

Dan had done just as she told him, walking not too fast, not too slow, passing Blair and the man, who were having what appeared to be a tense conversation, and Dan saw his hand come up and grip her arm, and he was speaking with a thick accent, but Dan just kept his eyes forward. When he finally got through the doors of the museum he realized he'd been holding his breath, and he was suddenly gasping, leaning on a column then ran to the edge of the steps and vomited, hoping no one saw him, and maybe they'd think he'd just had a little too much the night before. When his stomach was emptied of its contents he stood up, wiped his mouth and started to figure out what to do next.

He'd wandered around most of the day, stopping in random stores, browsing through shelves of books but not seeing any of the titles, sitting on a bench in a park watching kids play, not noticing the rain drizzling on his face. The hours went by slowly until he found himself sitting here, drinking, thinking it might be in his best interest to try to eat something, wondering where Blair is, and hoping she is safe.

Fucking CIA.

Dan is about to take another drink of his warm beer when he feels a light touch on his elbow and turns his head to find Blair next to him. She smiles and he's filled with an overwhelming sense of relief and realizes he'd been holding back his worry all day long.

"Blair," Dan smiles.

"Sorry it took me so long, Humphrey." Blair says quietly, "I had to do some fast talking and then it took me a while to shake the tail they put on me."

He doesn't ask who they are. Dan's not sure he wants to know.

Her hand is on the sleeve of his coat and Dan glances down at it, noticing the always perfectly manicured nails as well as the slight tremor, and he thinks that the casual tone Blair is striking, like she's just been shopping all day or at the spa, belies the severity of the situation.

Suddenly Dan is filled with a million questions and he turns to her and takes her hand in his, his grip stopping the tremor, and his voice is filled with both worry and accusation as he blurts out,

"CIA, Blair, what the hell?"

She looks nervous at his words then smiles brilliantly, and banters back casually, and it's like they're back in New York, sitting in some random bar, spending an evening together.

"Yes, Culinary Institute of America, my role as wife made me realize that I can't rely on Dorota forever and there is use in knowing how to make a good roux, or hollandaise," she says a little too brightly and a little too loudly, then her voice lowers and she leans toward him and hisses, "not here, Humphrey, not now."

Blair stands up and her hands smooth her coat, and she is all grace and manners as she tells him she has to get going, and maybe he would like to accompany her back to the hotel, and although it seems like Chuck would be there and it might become awkward, Dan manages to stammer yes, because he's again feeling completely out of the loop and confused, and it's best at this point just to follow her lead.

They head out to the sidewalk and the night is damp, making Dan shiver a little, and despite the beer, he's a bit chilled. Blair is on the phone, calling for a car, then she hangs up and turns to him, moving very close, and says quietly.

"I can take my gun back now."

Blair's gun. Dan looks at her blankly, not really digesting her words, then he reaches in his pocket and his fingers recoil again at the feel of the cold metal, and Dan is reminded that he doesn't really like guns, then he carefully slips it into her waiting hand. Blair flashes a smile and puts it into her pocket. He suspects she really knows how to use it and it's not just some strange trend in accessorizing.

"What about..." Dan starts to ask but the look on Blair's face makes him stop, and she tells him she can take it, the packet, later, and he knows she wants to avoid the exchange in such a public place.

"You don't need to be further tangled up in my mess, Humphrey," Blair whispers, and although Dan likes the familiarity of her 'Humphrey', he's kind of sad that the moment when she said his first name and kissed him hard, has passed.

The car pulls up and Blair opens the door and waits for him to climb in, then she climbs in behind him, settling back into the leather seat, and she tells the driver to go to some address, and Dan thinks that's not where any hotel he knows.

"Safe house." Blair says, seeing his confused look. "We can't go back to the hotel. It would look bad and what if Chuck sees us together, that would be bad for everyone. Anyway, I have to drop off that…"

Her hand is out and Dan realizes she means the packet, and he pulls it out from inside his jacket and hands it to her. Blair looks at it and says something about a lot of trouble, then puts it on the seat and smiles at him.

"You saved me back there," Blair says after what feels like a long silence where Dan has a lot he wants to say but can't think of any way to get the words out.

"It's okay to talk here?" Dan asks.

"Oh yeah, the driver is a company man, we're safe at the moment."

Dan wants to laugh at the word 'safe' because he's spent his entire day feeling the least safe he's ever felt.

"What the hell, Blair?" He can finally unload on her and he does, turning to her, wanting to reach out and shake her, to find out why she's gone from being Queen B to Spy B.

Blair smiles and it's a smile full of apology, and she says 'I'm sorry' in the way a person does when they know they've been caught. He asks her how this all came to be and Blair tells him from the beginning.

She had been recruited in high school through a summer camp program her mom had thought would look good on her application to Yale. It was just an internship, but she'd done well during the three month duration, and when she was done, her boss had told her there could be a place for her someday.

"I blew them off," Blair shrugged. "Didn't take them seriously. I mean, I was all about Nate, then Chuck and college, and I actually forgot about the offer."

"Then?" Dan asked.

"Bart Bass was found out to be alive."

Dan's eyebrows went up with this information. Bass was somehow involved with this?

"I always thought he'd gotten his money from real estate," Blair explained, "but it turns out he's one of the most wanted gun smugglers in the world, and when he surfaced after being thought dead for so many years, the CIA wanted to go after him."

"And that guy today, the one with the scar, is he connected to Bart Bass?"

Blair sighs and tells him that it was a side job, that the CIA knew she'd be going to London and they'd asked her to pick up a packet from an informant working with a Russian crime syndicate operating in London, and the man with the scar was one of the Russian's enforcers. She had seen him trailing her the day before, which was why she'd found Dan and asked him to come with her, just in case she needed to hand off the packet, and it had turned out to be the case. So yeah, he'd saved her ass.

"So, why you?" Dan asked. "Why did the CIA recruit you after Bart was discovered to be alive.

Blair looks at him and sighs a little. She doesn't say anything right away, just swallows and watches him, like she knows what's coming next is going to be upsetting. Dan guesses what they wanted before it comes out of her mouth.

"Chuck." Blair whispers, pain evident in her voice. "They wanted someone who could get close, who would be able to be on the inside and fit in seamlessly, and they knew about my past with Chuck, and it made sense."

Dan feels sick. He turns his face away from Blair and looks out the window, at the buildings flashing by as the car turns down a side street. Blair's explanation makes him realize that he'd been a victim of friendly fire in this situation, a casualty of a plot bigger than him. Her hand touches his shoulder and he jerks away.

"I'm sorry." Blair whispers, her voice raw and full of emotion. "Breaking up with you was the hardest part of the whole assignment, and I couldn't tell you, and I thought I was going to die for a couple days, and I can't tell you how many times I wanted to call it off."

Dan's jaw is clenched.

"So the marriage, breaking up with me, all of this…this awfulness I've gone through…it's all been a lie?"

He turns back to Blair and he sees she is crying, her cheeks wet with tears, her hands clasped in her lap, and she looks small and vulnerable. She nods.

"It was all part of the mission."

TBC


	3. Chapter 3

_(Author Note: I think I lied about not updating quickly. :))_

_It was all part of the mission. _

Dan doesn't like being the sacrificial lamb.

They say nothing to each other the rest of the ride, Dan staring out the window, watching the lights flash by. Blair glancing over at him now and then, and if he turned and looked at her, he would see worry that she'd gone too far etched across her face.

_It was all part of the mission._

She walked out on him and broke his heart, and it was all for what was basically a job. It's not that he didn't want her to be a career woman, but toting around guns, running from bad guys and betraying the person who loves her the most wasn't Dan's idea of a good career move. He longed for the days at W when sabotage took the form of a latte flavored with Chanel No. 5 and Blair was still someone who turned out had a shocking ability to amaze him.

Not that he wasn't shockingly amazed at this latest turn of events.

It would have been easier to accept her walking away if he hadn't been in love with her. Who was Dan kidding, he was still in love with her which made this entire situation feel even more confounded.

"He sells weapons to countries who use child soldiers, you know. He's a terrible man. It's the right thing to do."

There is conviction in Blair's words, and Dan knows she is telling the truth. Sometimes there are things that need to be done no matter what the sacrifice. Still...

The car pulls to a stop outside a darkened house and Dan just sits, still staring out the window, not turning around, not wanting to hear any noble explanation for Blair shattering his heart into a million pieces, not wanting to admit that maybe she did what she did for the right reasons.

"You could get killed." The words make Dan choke a little and he thinks about the scar-faced man in the museum who looked like he is the type to have more than one person's blood on his hands, and what if Blair hadn't handed the packet to Dan, what if she'd been caught.

He's still not looking at her but Dan thinks he can her Blair grin.

"I'm careful. And well trained."

Yeah, Dan thinks. CIA summer camp. Spies and s'mores. He turns back to her and is confronted with her smile, brilliant and slightly sad, and he knows she's being flip because the reality of how dangerous her life has become is something she can't admit to.

"I loved you," Dan says quietly after a long period of silence.

"Past tense?" Blair asks, her voice shaking a little, and Dan knows she's afraid of his answer.

"No." Dan answers. He can't lie to her. Not now. "Not past tense."

Blair is silent again, digesting his words. She takes his hand in hers then leans forward and places a long, sweet kiss on Dan's lips. He shivers at her touch and wants more, but forces himself to gently kiss her back, not to consume her like he wants to, then breaks away.

"Do you want to come in?" Blair asks softly, her eyes searching his. "We're safe here. We could spend a little time together..."

He does, but he doesn't. Because no matter how fucked up this is, with Blair, Girl Spy and Lonely Boy her unwitting accomplice, Dan knows how this will end if he steps out of the car with her. He knows what it feels like to fuck her, to be inside her, and he wants that feeling again. He knows that his defenses are weak and his anger is thin, and getting thinner. And he knows he may not have another moment like this in a long time, maybe not ever again.

"No." Dan lies. "I don't."

Blair's face falls. Dan grips her hand even tighter. It is small and soft and doesn't feel like it could wield a gun and pull the trigger, sending a bullet into someone. Like so much of Blair Waldorf, it's a contradiction, and Dan can see how she makes the perfect spy.

"I'll complicate your mission," Dan tells her. Blair doesn't laugh, just looks at him then tells him that he already has. She's right. Things were less complicated when he was alone and trying to mend his broken heart. It was a clean cut. Now he knows that Blair still loves him, and she's married to someone else, and she's putting herself in danger for something bigger than both of them, and anything that makes Chuck or Bart doubt her loyalty will put her in danger.

Dan cups her chin in his hand and he leans forward to kiss her again, and this time it's hungry and wanting and when she kisses him back he just moans, and doesn't want to stop. Blair has a way of cutting down all his defenses and self control.

"Now, go." he whispers against her lips and rests his forehead against hers. Blair is breathing hard but she does manage to break away, pushing the car door open and stepping out into the cool evening. Dan doesn't watch her walk up to the house, just settles back into the leather seat and stares forward, trying to pretend this isn't his life.

Blair is back quickly and she slides next to him, a little too close, then tells the driver to take them back to Dan's flat. They hold hands the entire way back, not talking, not even looking at each other, and at least this is a better goodbye than the last time, when Blair walked out and into the arms of Chuck Bass. It is a small consolation.

"This will be over." Blair tells him as they pull up to the building where his flat is.

"And then," Dan asks. He's still holding her hand. Blair blinks back what appear to be tears.

"Then I'll figure out how much I have to beg to get you to take me back."

It's the closest she can come to acknowledging that her mission has made things much more complicated, and Dan knows that the answer to whether or not he'll take her back was given a long time ago when she asked if he would be there for her. Always. He won't tell her that right now.

When he gets home, Dan grabs his journal and writes furiously until he collapses into his uncomfortable, lumpy bed. His eyes drift shut almost immediately, but she's there in his dreams and so is the man with the scar, and Dan is holding the gun and he squeezes...

"NO!"

The room is dark and he is reaching out for her before he realizes she's not there, but this isn't unusual. It's the way he wakes up most nights, groping for Blair who is never next to him. What's unusual is the feeling that Blair is in danger, and Dan starts to realize that living like this isn't going to be easy.

Dan doesn't know when he'll see Blair again, so when there's a tap-tap on his door the next day he's surprised to find her standing on the other side. He's bleary eyed, holding his morning cup of instant coffee and opens the door to let her walk through.

"Um, isn't this kind of dangerous?" Dan asks as she breezes in. She looks fresh, almost dewy, certainly not like she had been running from the Russian mafia the day before. In contrast, Dan hasn't shaved and his hair is sticking up all directions, and he's still wearing the ratty sweats and t-shirt he wore to bed. She's the picture of a society wife and he's the epitome of the crazy writer, both of them playing their roles well.

"I live for danger, Humphrey." Blair retorts. She's a little too bright, a little too cheery, and Dan senses something is wrong. The last time he'd seen her this chipper she was busy living in denial that she could have feelings for Brooklyn's up and coming young writer, and although the outcome had been Blair's revelation that she had feelings for him, it had been painful getting there.

"I need your help." Blair tells him, perching on the same chair she'd sat on just twenty four hours before.

She told him more about why she'd come to London. Since rising from the dead, Bart had been doing most of his business dealings alone, but she found out that he was going to bring Chuck in on a deal with a contingent from Africa. Chuck had told her it was about building a resort hotel, but the CIA had contacted her and told her they thought something bigger was going down, so she'd convinced Chuck to bring her along on the merits of the shopping opportunities alone. Blair pauses her story to tell Dan how much she loves London fashion.

"When I returned to the suite last night," Blair continues, "a meeting was just wrapping up, and I recognized one of the men. It's not a hotel they're talking about. I had seen one of the men in some pictures they showed me before I started the mission."

Blair pauses and looks at him, her face suddenly serious.

"They're LRA."

Lords Resistance Army. Notorious for kidnapping children and turning them into killing machines or sex slaves.

"I'm impressed, Blair." Dan says. Blair rolls her eyes at him.

"Don't be, Humphrey. I can't wait to get back to my world where little girls dream of the first Louboutin's, fashion week and their only concerns are what's trending on twitter. Don't make me out to be some sort of crusader for the cause. They just made a good case, but I'm not heading into a career as a Goodwill Ambassador quite yet, and the only thing I'd really like to occupy any time soon is Bergdorf's."

Dan smiles. Despite the gun, possible combat training and knowledge that LRA isn't some sort of fashion house, she is still Blair Waldorf of the Upper East Side. Some things never change.

"And Chuck's involved?" Dan asks. He is sitting on the sagging bed that occupied one wall of the studio flat.

Blair sighs heavily and shakes her head. She is twirling a strand of hair over and over, then she stands up and starts pacing back and forth across the worn floor. Her posture is tense, shoulders hunched a little, like she's preparing to enter into battle. Dan thinks this isn't far from the truth.

"I think so. For all of Chuck's faults, this is a terrible thing to involve him in. But of course, Bart has never vied for the Father of the Year award. Chuck's always been somewhat on the up and up with his business dealings, but this...this, well, it's going to make his fortune into blood money."

Dan doesn't want to think too much about Chuck. If he does he'll remember that the woman he's in love with is married to him, sleeping with him, and even though the bigger picture is that Blair has made some difficult choices in order to do something that might save lives, it doesn't change the fact that Dan's heart was caught in the crossfire. It doesn't change the fact that when this is all over, they are going to have to deal with the fallout.

"I need to find proof that the people who were there last night are LRA. I need a diversion, and that's where you come in," Blair sighs and pauses for a moment, then ponders out loud, "if only this had gone down at home and I had Dorota and all her resources, but you'll have to do for this one, Humphrey."

Dan smiles at the slight, finding Blair's mild insults amusing as always and thinking that she's right. Dorota, with her accents and disguises, would be perfect for the job.

"You could fly her here." Dan suggests, he knows somewhat unhelpfully. Blair rolls her eyes at him again.

"Take this seriously, Humphrey."

Dan makes them some tea while Blair outlines her plan. They dip biscuits into the hot liquid between the details. He will show up at the suite, acting a little drunk, and confront Chuck about stealing Blair from him. They will do their usual adversarial song and dance, and Dan will try to punch Chuck, causing security to be called.

"Can I actually punch him?"

Dan gets a glare leveled in his direction for that one. Blair reminds him that Chuck is as much of a victim in this as he is, and neither of them say the reality that it's Blair who has victimized Dan as well as Chuck. And Bart dragging Chuck into his nefarious dealings makes things even worse. So no, Blair tells Dan, he may not punch Chuck.

Dan shrugs his concession to no punching being involved and they are back to the plan.

Blair in the meantime will slip into Bart's room and try to get evidence. Dan asks if she has any special spy gear and she glares at him again, telling him that this isn't some television show, but then admitting that yes, she does have a very small camera the CIA gave her that she can use and conceal very easily. Dan will be escorted out by security and it will all be over and done.

"And will this be what the CIA needs?" Dan asks, for the first time realizing that Blair's mission may not have any specific end date.

"I hope so." Blair says, sipping her tea from the chipped cup that had come with the flat. They are quiet for a while, listening to the sounds of the street drifting through the thin paned windows, muffled by morning fog. Finally Dan speaks into the silence, his voice somber.

"So tomorrow then." he says with finality.

"Yes," Blair answers. "Tomorrow. Go time."

Go time.

TBC


	4. Chapter 4

She kisses him before she goes. It's short, perfunctory, and it makes Dan go 'mmmmmmm' against her mouth, lingering, wanting more.

"You should have stayed last night." Blair murmurs, kissing him again, and her hands are slipping under his t-shirt and skimming across the bare skin of his back. Dan can't breathe, can't think. Only feeling is left.

Somehow being in London was like being in some sort of alternate universe. Here he can kind of forget that Blair walked out on him. In this moment it was only them, no Chuck, no betrayal. It's like the last few months never happened and they were back to being Dan and Blair with nothing between them.

It was too easy to forget.

"I couldn't stay." Dan whispers the truth against her mouth as he kisses her again. She presses herself even closer to him.

"I've missed you so much." she sighs.

They kiss again, and again, sweetly, a little more urgently, then Dan finds himself pushing her away and Blair stares up at him, searching his face.

"Please..." she intones breathily. Dan's heart skips a beat and he wants nothing more than to keep kissing her, to taste her again, but he knows this is no different than New York and nothing will erase all that is between them now. He touches her face, tracing its features with his fingertips and Blair closes her eyes.

"Stay safe." Dan whispers. He kisses her on her forehead and closes his eyes and silently promises her that he will do whatever is in his power to protect her.

"Always." Blair smiles. She shoves something into his hand, and this time it's not a gun but a phone. A burner, she tells him, untraceable, a safe line. Just in case. In case she gets caught? in case something goes wrong? In case she has to call it off?

It's all about the mission.

Then she is gone, the door clicking shut behind her, the ghost of her kiss on his lips, and Dan is standing alone. He shivers a little, suddenly feeling chilled, or maybe because he knows what lies ahead and Blair will be in danger and he suspects that Bart Bass wouldn't take betrayal lightly.

Dan never wanted to be an actor but here he is, about the play the role of a lifetime. And if something goes wrong, if he isn't convincing, Blair will be caught. His heart is beating hard and he thinks he can hear its telltale rhythm echo through the flat. His mouth is dry, his tongue feels thick, but he's still frozen. He stands there, letting all his thoughts run together into one long stream of consciousness soliloquy, and Dan wishes more than anything he could manage to move and get a pen and start writing, because this might be some of the best shit he's ever produced. He doesn't. Then finally he moves, willing himself to do what he knows he needs to do. To get ready to walk into the lion's den, one step at a time.

It's a long day. Dan showers, shaves, pulls on jeans and a t-shirt he'd washed at the laundromat down the street, the last of his cleans clothes. He leaves the flat, heads out to the street, walking past shops and restaurant, hands shoved into the pockets of his coat, head hunched down.

It had been two days since Blair had appeared back in his life but it felt like at least a lifetime ago, if not something that was happening to someone else. Not him. He would wake up and everything would be the same and Blair would be married to Chuck and Dan would be alone. There would be no fucking CIA, no Bart Bass arms dealer, no spy games to be played. He would be alone again.

Dan knows better.

He ends up ducking into an Indian hole in the wall and ordering a curry and some naan, sipping on a mango lassi, when he pulls out the phone Blair had gave him and contemplates it.

It would be morning in New York, the sun lighting up the streets, making things seem brighter and cleaner than they really are. Rufus would be waking up, probably making coffee, maybe planning to head to the studio for the day. Suddenly Dan misses his dad. He turns the phone over in his hand and then, on a whim, he dials the country code for the states and his dad's number.

It rings.

"Hello?" Rufus' answers after a couple rings, his voice formal and a little tentative, and Dan knows he didn't recognize the number.

"Dad."

Rufus is happy to hear from him, his voice echoing like he's an ocean away, and Dan wants to be there with him, sitting at the counter in the loft with a cup of coffee, and he would pour out his heart to him and tell him how topsy turvy his life had become in the last couple days, and he would tell Rufus that he's still in love with Blair despite his best intentions, and maybe his dad would have some ideas how to dislodge something that has become too deeply embedded in him.

Not that Dan really wants to stop loving Blair.

Dan tells Rufus that he's in London and things are going fine. He tells him that he went to the National Gallery and he's eating the best curry he's ever tasted, that it's been raining and he's thinking about his next destination. He thanks him for the journals and says he's sending another one soon. He leaves out his new life of espionage and his role as sidekick. He doesn't tell him anything about Blair or that in a couple hours he's going to take an elevator up to penthouse suite of a fancy hotel and threaten to hurt Chuck Bass. Some things are better left unsaid.

Rufus says things with Lily are going poorly and Serena has been sleeping all day and refusing to come out of her room, and that Eric returned from Sarah Lawrence and has been keeping vigil in the living room. He tells Dan that he thinks his marriage might actually be over and Dan responds that you never know how quickly things can change.

"Have you given any thought to when you're coming home?" Rufus asks casually, and Dan knows the question is far from casual.

"Soon, dad." Dan replies, and he's telling the truth. After this he thinks it's time to go home, to sleep in his own bed, to be done with Europe and running away. He doesn't know what will happen with Blair and he can't think much beyond getting through tonight, but he knows that home will be his next destination.

"Good." Rufus says. He pauses for a brief moment, then adds. "I miss you, Dan."

"I miss you too dad."

They talk a little more about Jenny, and a possible trip over the summer, then Dan makes some excuse, telling Rufus he needs to go, tells his dad he loves him, and he ends the call.

The day is coming to a close and Dan only has a couple more hours. He heads back to his flat, splashes water on his face, tries to watch some television, but fails, then finally heads out again, finding the nearest pub and ordering himself a pint. If he's going to act drunk he might as well make an effort to smell a like a brewery.

Dan thinks through the story Blair had come up with, telling him that when lying it's best to stick as close to the truth as possible. He's been in London a couple weeks (true) and he saw Chuck on the street. Heartbroken (true) he follows him and finds out where he's staying. He goes and gets drunk, then returns to the hotel and confronts Chuck about stealing Blair away from him. Blair uses the distraction to sneak into Bart's room with her super-spy camera and a USB drive and gets what evidence she can. Dan will try to keep Chuck busy for at least five minutes. She won't get caught.

The phone in his pocket jumps and Dan startles then pulls it out.

_All is good, still Go Time, B_

Dan swallows and his mouth feels parched so he takes another drink. He looks at his watch and sees they have one more hour. Time to head toward the hotel. He pays the bartender then heads out to the street and starts walking to the nice area of town where the hotel is. His pace quickens and every nerve feels like it's tingling. As he walks Dan thinks through all the things about Chuck that he hates. He feels his anger toward Bass that lurks beneath the surface start to boil up.

There are a lot of things to hate about Chuck Bass, but the one that Dan hates the most is Chuck's need to win, and that he thinks he's finally won the ultimate prize. He hates how he treats Blair like a possession, some sort of prize. He hates that he can't see how vibrant and smart and self-possessed she is. He hates that he can't see that she belongs to no one.

That will change soon. This thought makes Dan smile. Chuck sold Blair to his uncle for a hotel and Blair has now sold out Chuck Bass and his dad to the United States government. Tit for tat.

He arrives at the hotel and he's a little early, so Dan walks around the block and pretends that he's not entirely nervous, and thinks about that little gun that Blair carries, and tells himself not to worry, that Agent Waldorf can take care of herself.

Dan enters the lobby of the hotel, which is opulent and spacious, makes his way to the elevator bank and impatiently pushes the button a couple times.

"Come on, come on." Dan whispers.

The elevator doors slide open and he steps in, gazing around at the dark wood panels and there is something he always likes about elevators. They remind him of kissing Blair's bare skin and in the middle of his game of espionage Dan finds the time to blush.

Jesus, she has an affect on him. The Blair Waldorf appeal breaks through at inconvenient times.

The elevator rockets upward, going to the very top of the hotel and when the doors slide open Dan finds himself staring into the face of one very startled Chuck Bass. He is standing in the middle of a large living room, dressed in a suit and tie, a handkerchief tucked into one pocket and Dan thinks that Chucks actually looks quite dapper. He's a little sorry to ruin his visage. Chuck's eyes widen at the sight of Dan Humphrey standing in the elevator, then they narrow and Chuck's mouth opens to hiss out his name.

"Humphrey."

Dan steps out of the elevator and he clenches his fist tightly and silently apologizes to Blair for what he's about to do. She is standing across the room watching him as he steps toward Chuck and Dan sees her mouth the word 'no' as he pulls his arm back and sends his fist into Chuck's cheek with a satisfying crunch.

"Fuck you, Bass." Dan says.

Blair's eyes widen and Dan sees one of the doors leading out of the living room open and the tall, angular figure of Bart Bass moves into his line of sight. Chuck is staring at Dan and rubbing his jaw with his fingers. Bart is moving toward Dan, his hand up, saying something Dan doesn't quite comprehend, but he thinks he's telling Dan to back off, then Bart is turning to Chuck and hissing something about needing to count on him to not drag his problems home with him, and maybe he's not ready for the big leagues. Chuck looks at his dad and back to Dan and Dan sees Blair scurry toward the door Bart just emerged from, and he remembers that Bart wasn't supposed to be there, and for a moment Dan panics and forgets what to do next, then Bart turns away from Dan and Dan realizes that he's going to go back to his room and he'll find Blair there.

"You stole her from me," Dan grits out from clenched teeth and he pulls his arm back again and hits Chuck a second time.

This time there is blood on his knuckles and trickling from the side of Chuck's mouth and no matter how much Dan hates Chuck, he doesn't really want to hurt him like this, but if he doesn't keep Bart and Chuck focused on him, Blair is going to be caught.

"You destroy everything you touch. Bastard"

Taking a deep breath, Dan throws himself at Chuck and they both tumble to the floor. He hears Bart yell for someone named Ivan, and Chuck is pushing at Dan and the roll back and forth on the plush carpet that covers the floor of the room, and Dan hears himself say that he loved her, that he loved Blair, and she was gone, and it was a little too close to the truth. He remembers Blair telling him that a good lie will always be closest to the truth.

There are people running into the room and someone is pulling Dan off Chuck, and he is hyperventilating, chest rising up and down, and Dan has the metallic taste of blood in his mouth. He feels strong arms wrap around him and Dan thinks this must be Ivan, and Chuck is struggling to his feet, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, walking toward Dan with a little bit of a limp.

"Humphrey, how did you find me?" Chuck spits out.

"Lucky coincidence." Dan answers. Again, close to the truth, but not that close. Chuck gets within inches of Dan's face and then winces at the smell of beer that Dan had splashed on his shirt before heading to the hotel.

"She chose me." Chuck says cooly with the air of the victor. "You might as well accept it and move on to writing your pathetic romance novels, or whatever they are. She's mine."

Dan lunges toward Chuck again, no longer caring that he's as much of a victim as Dan is, wanting to tell him the truth, that he's being played, that he hasn't won, that he's the mark in a giant con that's being run by the person he thinks has chosen him. The arms around him tighten and Dan feels something cold and hard push into his ribs.

A gun.

Fuck.

Not good.

"You're a mess." Chuck says cooly, recovering his smooth countenance and no one would believe the two men had been rolling around on the floor just moments before. "Ivan, escort him out."

Dan struggles half-heartedly but he knows that it's now game over. He hopes he's done enough buy time, and as Ivan starts to drag him backwards toward the elevator Dan's eyes dart around the room. Chuck is standing with his arms crossed. Bart is behind him, his face shadowed and menacing, and that's when Dan realizes something is wrong.

Blair is still in Bart Bass' room.

TBC


	5. Chapter 5

This time she doesn't tap-tap on his door, just materializes next to his bed, her hand softly shaking his shoulder, and he wakes up hearing her whisper his name.

"Dan?"

Relief floods through him and with one smooth motion Dan grabs her and pulls her to him, crushing his lips to her in a kiss that is almost brutal, and all he can think is that he almost lost her.

That's what he had thought earlier that evening.

He had almost yelled out a warning as Ivan had dragged him toward the elevator doors, but at the last minute common sense broke through the fog of panic that surrounded his brain and he managed to just yell out her name. He tried to struggle more, to fight for more time so Blair could finish rifling through Bart's papers, copying information from his hard drive, but the arms around him were muscled and strong, and he wasn't able to stop himself from being dragged backwards no matter how hard he fought.

Dan was still yelling at the elevator doors slid shut and the last thing he saw was Chuck's face as it smirked at him, the expression of someone who thought he was the victor.

"NO!"

_...no no no no no no..._

Ivan's grip was tight and it felt like an eternity before the elevator reached the lobby and Dan was being dragged across it, people turning to stare as he struggled. He enede up thrown out onto the pavement, his shoulder breaking his fall. Dan remembered that he tasted blood as he struggled to his feet, and his hand had a big scrape, but none of that mattered in the moment.

_Blair. _

He couldn't think. All he could see was Blair, scared, in the grips of Bart Bass, Blair with her gun, Blair scared. He'd wanted to run back into that hotel, back to the penthouse suite, find a way to keep her safe.

Safety had become a luxury, something that can no longer be assumed or be taken for granted.

Fucking CIA.

Instead he started walking. Blair had said she could handle herself, and he knows what she would say to him right now. She would look at him and smile. She might use his last name and her voice would be lightly teasing.

_..Humphrey..._

Then she would shake her head back and forth, the way she always does when she thinks he's being ridiculous or adorable, and she would say to him:

_...trust me... _

As he'd thought of her words, Dan felt the fear start to subside.

_...trust me..._

The night was mostly clear with some clouds drifting, and like New York, the sky was never really black because of the never ending war between the darkness and the London lights. It's not so different from home in the dark. Dan wishes he were at home and all of this was some sort of bad dream he would wake from and Blair would be sleeping soundly by his side and it would be six months ago and they would be happy and in love. No Chuck Bass and his sense of ownership and entitlement. No Bart Bass. Just Dan and Blair.

_Blair. _

Dan felt sick.

It's not like Blair couldn't talk herself out of any situation. She was Queen B after all, a mastermind of schemes and tricks, and even if Bart had walked in to find her in his room, she would have a good chance of convincing him it was all an innocent interlude.

Dan wouldn't have been able to do much anyway, probably put her into even more danger because it would be obvious they were working together. Better to let Blair handle things, better to trust her, but still...

Torture would have been better than ending up wandering the streets, wondering if the girl you love is in significant danger, wishing there were something you could do. So Dan decided he might as well head home because it was starting to feel pointless just to wander. He hailed a black cab and gave them his address. He slumped into the back seat, staring out the windows, not seeing anything, lost in thought.

His flat was quiet when he let himself in, too quiet and Dan paced and paced, the quite making him feel uneasy, letting his mind wander to too many dark places. He sat on the bed, then paced some more, then got a beer from the fridge and drank half it, and at some point he had managed to fall asleep against his will, because he was afraid of his dreams, afraid he was going to lose Blair over and over and he would be stuck, helpless, not wanting to see Chuck's leering face.

His sleep had been strangely deep and dreamless, until her voice broke through and he opened his eyes to see Blair silhouetted in the moonlight, and he could barely make out her face, couldn't see her expression, but he could smell freesia and what happens next was nothing short of destiny, because there was nothing Dan could do to stop himself.

He kisses her and she kisses him back and it's frantic, heated, and they are grappling with each other, pushing and pulling, and there is nothing sweet or romantic, just raw hunger and desperation, driven by fear. Dan is tearing at her clothes, not really aware if he is successful and she is helping him, her shaking fingers unbuttoning, unzipping, until she is naked, her cheeks flushed, her breasts rising up and down, her mouth parted as she stares at him.

"Please." Dan whispers, needing her against him, needing to feel her skin, needing the friction, and there is an ache inside him that is sharp and painful and needs to be stopped. It's all need and only Blair can stop it. He still can't see her face in the darkness and she is pulling his shirt over his head and he is fumbling and clumsy as he he pulls his pants off and flings them away from him and then she is straddling him and they are both finally naked and her skin is finally against his, hot, searing him, and Dan is overwhelmed with urgency.

Blair bends down pressing her breasts to his chest and whispers in his ear, her voice hoarse and breathy, her fingers grip his hair, pulling a little, and it hurts in a really good way. It makes Dan moan.

"Fuck me. Now. Hard."

Dan rolls over and Blair is under him and she spreads her legs, his hips settling between her thighs and she is so soft and sweet, and for one moment Dan has the urge to slow down and really drink in how lovely Blair Waldorf is because he's missed her, but her teeth are nipping at his shoulder and he gasps, then grabs her hands, pinning them above her head with one hand, the other finding her breast, and Blair laughs a little but the sound turns into a gasp and he is inside her, fucking her just as she'd requested.

It is hot and fast and they both come quickly, Blair's head thrown back, Dan shuddering and calling out her name, and he collapses against her, her slight frame taking his entire weight, and Dan feels Blair laugh.

"God, that was good," she says into the crook of his neck, her voice muffled. Dan doesn't answer because all coherent thought has fled his brain.

Dan's hand tremble a little and he rolls off her, sinking back into the uncomfortable bed. Blair turns onto her side and props herself up with her elbow and looks at him, then smiles.

"Finally, Humphrey. I've practically been begging you to fuck me, and all it took was a little danger."

Blair's voice is casual and suddenly Dan is mad at her for being so flip. She could have been killed and now she's acting like it was some sort of joke, hi-jinx worthy of Constance, not really dangerous. Didn't she see the gravity of the situation? She walked into his life just a couple days ago, told him everything he'd thought about her was a lie, turned out to be some sort of girl spy, then almost got caught and there was nothing he could do to help her. It wasn't a joke.

"What the fuck?" Dan spits out, pushing her away, angry, and Blair pulls herself up to a sitting position, hugging her knees to her chest, watching him.

"Dan?"

He wants to grab her by the shoulders and shake her, because this is not a game anymore. It's not some Blair Waldorf scheme. It's spying on an international gun smuggler, one who had faked his death, and it's serious.

"You could have been killed."

Blair's face grows serious. The smile, the light tone is gone. She reaches out and touches his face with her fingers and Dan can't help but shudder. Will there ever be a time when this girl doesn't shake him his very core?

"I was okay," she whispers, her voice steady and reassuring. "I told them I was scared, that you scared me, so I hid in the first room I could find. But I was safe."

"If I lost you again." Dan squeezes his eyes because being so afraid for Blair's safety has made everything crystal clear and incredibly painful all at once. He loves her and she might destroy him. He knows this with no uncertainty.

"You won't." Blair says, her voice serious. "I'm not letting anything happen to me."

She is pure will, pure determination and Dan wants to tell her that a bullet doesn't care about any of that, and neither does Bart Bass, and if he knew that she was a threat to his entire operation she'd be at the bottom of the Thames, there would be no body to bury, her family would be devestated and Dan will not survive.

"I love you."

With those words Dan hands Blair his future. She's a girl packing heat. She's a spy with bravado. She's a dictator of taste. She's Queen B and a girl who longs for a fairy tale. She's the most amazing woman he's ever been involved with. She carries his heart.

She is his heart.

Blair is crying now, the tears run down her cheeks but she doesn't wipe them away as she stares at him. She takes his face in her hands, leans forward and kisses him, long and slow. Dan kisses her back, savoring the way her mouth moves on his, tasting her sweetness. She pulls back and he leans in and kisses her again.

"Dan," Blair whispers against his lips.

They kiss again.

Just don't leave me again, Dan wants to tell her. Not permanently. I don't want to go to your funeral. He says none of this, just keeps kissing her, never wanting to stop.

Finally they break apart and Blair is holding his hands in hers. She tells him that she was very successful, that she has already dropped off the camera and USB drive at the safe house. She tells she's so sorry that he had to be so scared for her safety, and she never expected Bart to be there. Dan nods, understanding, maybe even hopeful that Blair is done with her mission. Then Blair can leave Chuck and they can go back to New York, and he can write and she can obsess about her social standing and it will be like London and the CIA were just a bad dream.

"So," he asks when she has told him everything, "Is this over?"

Blair nods still holding his hands.

"I think so."

She tells him that she thinks so, that she got a lot of information. She smiles and kisses him and says that all she needs is to hear back from her handler, and her mission is done. No more spy games. No more Agent Waldorf. Just plain old Blair and Dan doesn't tell her that there will never be anything plain about her, spy or no spy.

Dan thinks of something as they are sitting there, the room still dark, their voices hushed like someone could be listening. It's a small detail, but it nags at him, and he decides that he has to ask.

"Um, how did you get here, by the way."

Blair flashes him one of her brilliant, knowing smiles and she gets a look on her face that tells Dan that she thinks she's awfully clever.

"Oh, I picked the lock," Blair shrugs, her voice light and casual, like she's talking about the order of flatware for a dinner party or discussing if one can wear white shoes after Labor Day.

Dan laughs for the first time that night. Maybe things can never entirely go back to how they were.

TBC.


	6. Chapter 6

Blair slips away in the early morning.

Dan wakes up and she's sitting on the edge of the bed with her back to him, bare, her hair pulled over one shoulder. The moonlight makes her skin look paler than usual, almost alabaster and her hair is raven dark, blending into the shadows that creep out from the corners of the room, and Dan just watches her, not saying anything.

He would write about this moment if he wasn't occupied by watching Blair. He would open one of his journals and scrawl out page after page dedicated to the smallest details about her.

He studies the line of her neck, the way it flows into her shoulder, the one he was kissing not that long ago, and he thinks that there is not a moment of his life that he won't love this woman. He almost tells her this, opens his mouth, says those three words, but instead he says something else.

"You're so beautiful."

Dan is propped up on an elbow, watching her, his eyes running along the line of her neck, committing it all to memory, as if she will slip away again and he'll be left alone, and who is he kidding, it's not like that's out of the realm of possibility.

Blair startles at the sound of his voice and Dan realizes she's been sitting there, thinking he was asleep. She turns her head and her eyes are wide and glossy with tears, and Dan thinks he can see the flush of a blush creep up her cheeks, even in the gray moonlight.

Blair is a mass of contradictions, all of them writhing just below the surface and she lives within that tension.

They have fucked more than once. She is surprisingly dirty in bed with a nice edge of kink, and some of the things they've done should make her blush, but the flush of embarrassment only creeps up her cheeks when she catches him watching her, and then she is the epitome of a shy school girl, dark eyelashes fluttering down onto pale cheeks, and Dan likes this dichotomy.

"I have to go," Blair whispers, leaning down to grab her stockings off the floor then she starts to put them on.

"What will you tell Chuck?" Dan asks her as she pulls her dress over her head then runs her fingers through her unkempt hair, and Blair smiles that same confident smile that always barely manages to reassure him. The one that holds a million secrets.

"That I slept on the couch," Blair says almost absently, as if she's told him this many times before, and Dan thinks that maybe she has. "Chuck sleeps soundly, plus I slipped him a little something tonight to help with that."

She is smoothing the wrinkles out of her dress and putting on the oversized hat she had used to conceal her identity as she journeyed through the night, then she looks at Dan and her face grows serious.

"This should be over soon."

She got the information on Bart. It's at the safe house. It's just finding out from her handler if what she got will work. Then they will be set free. And...

"We can go back home." Dan says into the darkness, almost to no one in particular. Home, where they can be Dan and Blair again, and he knows there will be whispers and innuendo, that no one on the UES can resist a good story, and Blair marrying Chuck then leaving him for Dan fell on the far side of epic. No one would know the truth except for them.

"I am home." Blair says softly. "We can just go back to our old lives, but as long as you're with me, I am home."

Dan's heart contracts with her words.

"Stay with me now." he blurts out, knowing the impossibility of his request. "Just stay. Forget Chuck, Bart Bass, all the woes of the world. Stay here."

Blair smiles in the darkness, and this time it isn't flip or full of confidence. It's not clever or scheming. It can only be described as loving. She crosses the room back to the bed and climbs onto it, kneeling next to him, and kisses him. It's not like the other kisses, full of desperation and want, but sweet and gentle, almost bordering on vulnerable, like a first kiss in the rain on a Saturday night with the smell of freesia all around you, and Dan's hands come up to tangle in her hair, and Blair is running her hand up and down his back, and when they break apart Dan feels like he wants to cry. It's not a kiss that says goodbye, but it feels to close to that.

"Soon." Blair murmurs.

Then she is gone and Dan is left alone with the moonlight and the drip drip of the faucet, and he can't move because it feels like when she left before, like she's taken his heart with her. Dan realizes that Blair is his heart, his heart walking around, in danger and if something happens to her he will never be the same.

"Be safe." Dan whispers into the empty room.

_Be safe. _

She has gone back to the city, to be by Chuck's side, to play the perfect wife. Just for a little longer, just until Langley finishes analysing the data she downloaded from Bart's laptop, and then she'll come get him and it will all be over.

If she were in London, Dan would find her and they would find those dark places that illicit lovers take advantage of, and she would reassure him it would be any day now. Instead there is silence, no communication, and Dan remembers Blair whispering to him that what happens next will not be for the faint of heart, and no matter what, trust her.

Days pass with no word from Blair. Dan paces back and forth across the floor, trying to ignore the worry that has started to creep up on him. He decides that he can't wait like Blair asked him to.

He buys a plane ticket to New York city, a direct flight, two weeks away, waiting, waiting for Blair to knock on his door, tell him that it's all over, but she never comes. He writes in his notebooks, filling them up, pouring all his anxiety on plain lined page after page. It's the only thing that keeps him sane. The nights are the hardest, lying on the uncomfortable bed, the space next to him feeling particularly cold and empty, missing her, trying to keep from going to sleep because he knows the dreams will start and he'll wake up sweating and screaming her name, and he just wants this to be over.

The days tick by.

Rufus calls and he tells Dan that he's excited for him to come home. His travel bag is packed and it's only a couple days before Dan's supposed to finally go home. Home, without Blair.

"We'll send a car to the airport." Rufus says, his voice crackling over the phone line.

"Great." Dan says absently, wishing he could feel more excited about returning home but he can't shake the feeling that something has gone terribly wrong. Blair should have come back by now.

"Jenny is coming down and she said she wants to go to the zoo, just like we used to."

"uh huh."

"...and I'm going to make a huge batch of waffles for the first Humphrey brunch in a long time where all the Humphreys are actually together."

"okay,"

"Oh, and I saw Blair the other day."

_Blair. _

Suddenly Dan is paying attention.

"Wha...uh, did she say anything?"

"Dan," Rufus' voice is cautious. It's the voice of a father who has seen his son go through heartbreak. "I don't think you should bother with Blair anymore. She seems happy with Chuck."

"Dad...," Dan struggles to keep his voice even, casual, trying to sound like he doesn't care.

"Okay," Rufus sighs. "I don't know, she said something about plans changing, that she was going to return to London but they ended up going back to the same resort in St. Barts they always go to."

She wasn't coming. Something had changed. She was trying to get a message to him.

"She said to send her regards."

Dan is silent, turning Rufus' words over and over in his head. St. Bart's. She's still on the mission. It's not over.

_Fuck._

"Dan?"

Dan jerks at the sound of his dad's voice over the phone.

"I'm coming home."

Dan changes his ticket that night and he's on a plane the next day.

The city is cold. It's been an unusually chilly spring and people are still bundled in their scarves and winter coats, hurrying past him, not paying attention to the boy with the crazy hair and dazed look on his face. The sun is peering over the buildings, warming the pockets that are stilled chilled from the night. Dan inhales familiar smells as he steps out of the town car and stands on the sidewalk outside the loft.

_Home. _

The loft is quiet when he pushes the door open. It looks like Rufus has had someone come and clean for him because there isn't a speck of dust and it looks strangely unlived in, no books stacked high, no piles of papers covering surfaces. Dan takes his bag to his bedroom and smiles when he sees his bookshelf lined with his journals, carefully lined up, waiting to become a masterpiece.

He goes back to the kitchen and finds that Rufus had gone grocery shopping and there is a note on the counter that tells him to call when he gets in. Dan should call but he doesn't want to give up his solitude quite yet, to be drawn back into the web of family, socializing, where he will have to smile and pretend everything is okay. He wants to stay here in the silence for a little longer.

Dan stretches out on the couch. He can deal with Rufus and Jenny later. Right now he's jet lagged, sleepy and slowly his eyes drift shut and his sleep is surprisingly dreamless, as if being home in the loft brings some degree of peace.

"Dan."

At first he's positive he's dreaming, her voice calling to him from far away and he can't get to her, then he feels her hand on his shoulder, shaking him and Dan's eyes fly open.

_Blair._

Does the girl ever knock?

The sun coming through the windows of the loft has that late afternoon quality, tinging everything in warm oranges and yellows. It makes Blair's hair look reddish and she is almost glowing in the light. Dan smiles and looks up at her, his eyes heavy lidded and sleepy and he is so happy to see her that he forgets how complicated everything is.

"I missed you."

She leans down and kisses him, and he notices that she looks a little sad. He closes his eyes and kisses her back. Then she pulls away.

"You shouldn't have come back," Blair says, still standing, swaying a little.

Dan looks at her quizzically. Wasn't it their plan? To finally be together? He's confused...

"Things changed." Blair says, as if she can hear his thoughts. "I'm so sorry. I wanted to find a way to tell you, but I would have blown my cover."

"Blair..."

"I shouldn't even be here right now."

"So, the mission?" Dan asks, although he already knows the answer.

"Not over."

Dan squeezes his eyes shut. He swings his legs off the couch and sits up, his elbows resting on his knees. He can't look at her. He feels sick. Everything they had planned means nothing. She wasn't going to come back for him. She was going to leave him in London, leave him again.

"You said..." he finally manages to , and the relief he felt when he woke up and found her standing over him starts to metamorphosize into something else.

Anger.

Dan feels raw and exposed, and used.

"I didn't lie." Blair whispers. Her eyes have that familiar gloss of tears and Dan sees so much pain in them, but at that moment he can't care. "I just didn't know that getting out would be so hard."

"It's not." Dan spits out. "You just walk away."

"It's not that easy."

Dan is silent. They are standing apart, Blair watching him, refusing to let her eyes leave his face. He is still sitting, arms crossed, not wanting to say what is starting to bubble to the surface, a truth he wants to ignore for a little while longer.

_I can't do this. _

He can't stand it anymore, her going to Chuck, sleeping in the same bed, pretending to love him, leaving Dan all alone, worrying about her, not knowing if she's going to be caught, loving her so much that it hurts, terrified he's going to lose her. He needs this to be done and she had promised...

He says none of this.

"Do you love me?" Dan asks instead, not really wanting to know the answer.

"Yes," Blair whispers. Her voice is trembling.

"Then you walk away. You leave Chuck. You let the CIA get their fucking intelligence a different way. You come back to me."

"It's not..."

Dan finishes her sentence, "...that easy. I know. There's always a reason Blair."

"Dan..."

"It's easy for me," he continues, ignoring her. "I love you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you."

Blair doesn't say anything.

"I can't do this." Dan finally says. The truth. The words are out there now. Sitting between them. Blair opens her mouth then closes it again.

"I'm done Blair." His voice is cold and cutting, and he knows it hurts. He hopes it hurts the way she's hurt him. Leaving him in London, breaking her promises. Leaving him for Chuck. Using him. Over and over again. A relationship of convienence.

"Dan." she says, her voice small and plaintive, and he sees there are real tears rolling down her cheeks. Dan suddenly wants to take her in his arms and tell her he's sorry over and over and maybe they will be able to work this out. But he doesn't. He just stand up and walks toward the door, twisting the knob and pulling it open.

"Get out."

_I'm done._

TBC


	7. Chapter 7

Blair doesn't move. She stands there, staring at him, her eyes filled with tears that have spilled onto her cheeks and she doesn't bother to brush them off.

"Please..." she whispers as Dan stands holding the door open.

He has to make the break. It has to be a clean cut.

"You made your choice when you stayed with Chuck and didn't come back to London."

His voice is even, cold, no trace of bitterness, just stating the facts. She made her choice and Dan has accepted it. The problem is that Blair hasn't.

"I can't...I can't lose you. Not like this."

Dan's anger swells and he struggles to stay calm with her words. She left him for Chuck, married Chuck, and now she won't leave him. She lost Dan a long time ago and he just didn't realize it, and neither did he, until now.

"I can't be someone who is there when you need me and disappears when you don't." Dan spits out, his voice rising a little, his control slipping. "You made your decision, Blair. Now you have to live with it. You decided that I was less important than whatever else you have going on in your life, thinking I'd stick around no matter what, but I just can't."

"Don't you love me?" her voice is shaking, her eyes imploring, begging him not to do this, and Dan feels his heart contract with her question. He answers honestly, because all he has left at this point is the truth. He wishes the truth could set them both free, but it binds them closer together and makes a future together even more impossible.

"Yes, god yes," Dan murmurs, and the truth feels good. "I love you more than I thought possible. I love you more every day. There will never be a time that I won't love you. I will love you for the rest of my life."

As much as it feels right to tell her the truth, his words hurt Blair. Dan sees her flinch with each one, her face going pale. It was her last gamble, that maybe love would change his mind, but he knows it won't, and now she knows as well. This is more than love can fix.

"Okay." Blair says quietly. She sighs, her shoulders slumping and all of the sudden she looks worn out, exhausted, as if his words had destroyed the only thing that had been holding her together, and all Dan wants is to take her in his arms and stroke her hair and promise her that he's never going to leave her. He takes an involuntary step forward and Blair steps back a little, shrinking away from him, and Dan knows he's hurt her enough. There's nothing left to say.

He wants to kiss her, to let his lips brush her forehead, to have one last memory to savor, but her face is guarded and he knows that he has destroyed everything with his words. He'd wanted them to be over and now they truly were.

Instead he says something awkward, the kind of thing strangers say to each other,

"See you around."

Blair nods, her lower lip trembling, as if it's the last thing holding back a tsunami of sadness. She gives him one last, long glance, as if committing his face to memory, and Dan feels his eyes start to well up with tears. Then she is gone, the door swinging closed with a soft click and Dan is standing in the middle of the loft, alone.

They are done.

Dan doesn't leave the loft for two weeks. He doesn't really sleep, only when his body is taken over by sheer exhaustion is he able to finally collapse into bed but it's never the kind of sleep that leaves you actually rested. Her face is in his dreams. Her name is on his lips when he wakes up.

He misses her. It's worse than before because of the finality. He wants to tell her things, to point out funny moments in movies or tell her about a good article in the New Yorker.

He tries to write, grabbing his notebooks off the shelf, sitting with his computer. The words won't come so he just stares at a blank screen, a cold cup of coffee sitting next to him. Then one day they pour out and Dan is finally able to write about heartbreak and how it changes a person. He stays up late writing, fueled on caffeine and takeout.

Rufus comes over and Dan doesn't have to explain. His dad sees his disheveled appearance and says,

"It's over, huh?"

Dan nods. It's over.

"I know it hurts, Dan, but she did choose Chuck, and she seems happy, and I admit that I'd rather see you move on and find someone you can actually be with. Someone who makes you happy."

Dan has no response. Blair does make him happy, and Rufus has no idea that Blair has chosen neither him or Chuck but her life as a girl spy with the CIA. He feels trapped by the truth and that he's living a lie at the same time. Dan changes the subject to the latest band Rufus is producing and his dad is off on a rant about the state of music today.

Rufus makes him waffles and comes over every other day. They talk and drink beers in the evening. Dan wonders if his dad will ever stop worrying about him. He knows the answer is 'no'. It's what fathers do.

Nate shows up. He says he saw Blair, then apologizes when Dan winces at the sound of her name.

"She asked me to check on you." Nate says as he paces around the loft, picking up a book and turning it over a couple of times before putting it back on the coffee table.

Of course she did. Blair is probably asking the CIA to hack his email and putting a GPS in his book bag for all he knows. He knows she just wants to make sure that he's okay, but he wishes she could leave well enough alone. He had finally decided to walk away, so why can't she honor his wishes and not send Nate, a truly innocent party, into the middle of this mess to check on him.

"Tell her it's none of her business." Dan says evenly. "Not any more."

Nate doesn't ask any further questions, despite the fact that it's obvious that something happened between Dan and Blair recently when she's been married to Chuck for over six months. Dan doesn't know if it's because Nate is immune to the subtleties of human emotions or maybe he's just smart enough to not stick his nose further into things.

They shoot hoops at the park, Nate stooping to gracing the Brooklyn courts with his presence.

Jenny calls him, at the behest of Rufus, and she tells him that she's sad they didn't make it to the zoo. Her phone call is filled with boring, useless details about the latest trend in fashion and what her friends are up to. Dan lets her talk, just listening, hearing the love in his sister's voice.

"I miss you, Daniel Randolph." Jenny says before she hangs up.

"I miss you too, Jennifer Tallulah." Dan answers back. When they are done with the phone call he realizes he's smiling for the first time in days. Family has a strange power to heal.

He hears about Blair. It's hard not to. Blair Bass is the talk of the UES, attending charity galas on Chuck's arm, wearing the latest couture. She and Chuck are the prince and princess of the Upper East Side, gliding from event to event, a smile firmly fixed on her face, and Dan thinks that it's ironic that when Blair finally got her fairytale it turned out to be a double-edged sword. When he lets himself stare at her picture he realizes that her smile never reaches her eyes and she always looks sad.

Bart Bass is firmly in control of Bass Industries now and he donates money for a new research laboratory at the hospital and there's a big party to celebrate. Dan happens to be watching the news when they show footage of the event, and he sees Chuck standing next to his dad, his mouth pinched and jaw set, and Dan wonders of Baby Bass is chafing under his father's reign. Then he wonders why he even cares. Dan takes another drink of his beer and turns off the video then goes back to figuring out what takeout to order for dinner.

At some point things start to feel normal, or maybe Dan just adjusts to the new normal of not having Blair in his life, of loving someone he will never be with. Maybe he gets used to the pain that never seems to go away or the dreams that haunt his sleep. He finishes a short story based on his European journals and the New Yorkers accepts it. He starts to leaf through the NYU catalog. He starts to see a future where he is alone and it's not entirely bad.

Then one night there is a knock of the door.

Dan looks up on the couch and wonders who it could be. His mind goes back to a day, months ago, when there was a tap-tapping on his door in London and it turned out to be Blair. He was sure it wasn't her this time because it wasn't like Blair to actually knock when visiting him at the loft. She had demonstrated a lack of civility when it came to letting herself in, either with the spare key or just picking thelock. Anyway, she had stayed away since he kicked her out so he was sure it wasn't her.

Dan stands up and stretches a little, and maybe it's a lost delivery person. He walks over to the door and wishes again that they had a peephole. Dan pulls the door open a little and peers through the crack. Someone is standing on the other side, the dim light of the hallways casting a silhouette, but Dan can tell that it's a man from his height and broad shoulders. Then he steps forward and Dan's eyes widen in surprise.

"Holy shit." he says out loud, involuntarily. The person on the other side of the door is someone he'd never thought he'd see standing in his hallway at 10 pm, his hands shoved into the pockets of his cashmere coat, his clothes as immaculate as ever. Dan had thought he'd probably never see him again, but here he was.

"Well, Humphrey," his voice is as smooth and even as ever, "are you going to let me in?"

Chuck Bass. Fucking Chuck Bass is standing in his hallway.

Dan nods then opens the door wider and Chuck glides through the doorway.

"Uh, what brings you here, Chuck?" Dan asks, not sure if he wants to know. Has he found out about London? Does he know that Blair doesn't love him. Is Chuck's fist about to connect with Dan's jaw? Dan steps back, glancing over his shoulder to make sure that there isn't anything that he'll fall over if he has to dodge a punch.

"We have a common interest, Humphrey, as much as I hate to admit it."

Dan's eyebrows go up. He doesn't think Chuck is referring to a shared love of piroshkies. Chuck is glancing around the loft, taking in the piles of books and papers on various surfaces, the bare brick walls, the paint on the ceiling that's peeling a little.

"I'd forgotten how provincial your place is." Chuck intones.

Dan rolls his eyes. Really? Chuck can't say what he wants without throwing out at least one insult.

"What's going on, Chuck?" Dan asked, annoyed. "To what to I owe the pleasure of this visit?"

Dan wants to ask Chuck to get to the point, why is taking a field trip to Brooklyn to bother his wife's former lover. Chuck turns to him and his face has gone from unreadable to obvious worry.

"Its Blair," Chuck says. "I think she's into something over her head, and my dad thinks she spying on us for a competitor. I'm starting to realize he's into some pretty bad stuff and Blair might be somehow involved." Chuck sighs, "Sadly enough, Humprhey, you're the only person I know who will have Blair's best interests at heart. I need your help."

Dan just looks at Chuck. Was he kidding? Was Chuck Bass really standing in the middle of the loft telling Dan that he needed his help? Was he just now realizing that Bart might have some shady business dealings? Had he really figured out that Blair was up to some sort of scheme?

"Dude, you really have no idea."

TBC


	8. Chapter 8

No one wants to be the chump. Let alone the chump whose wife is CIA and long-dead resurrected dad turns out to be an international arms smuggler. Dan feels bad about what he's just told Chuck.

Bass is standing in the middle of Dan's loft looking incredulous and for a moment Dan thinks that this isn't the way Chuck should find all of this out and Dan shouldn't be the one to tell him. For a moment, Dan thinks this entire situation is unfair, and Chuck is ending up the biggest loser of all. He's realizing that he's lost his dad and he still doesn't know that not only is his relationship a casualty of the mission, it's actually entirely fictional.

"So there is not hotel venture in Africa?" Chuck asked.

"No." Dan says, watching Chuck digest the information. His jaw his clenched and Dan can see a muscle twitch. Chuck is pacing back and forth, stopping occasionally to ask another question.

"And those men we met with?"

"Lords Resistance Army."

"Are you kidding me?" Chuck asks, shocked to find out that the men he thought were legitimate businessmen were anything but.

"I guess when you're an arms dealer you sell to whoever can pay your price," Dan mutters, "no matter the consequence."

"I can't believe it," Chuck runs a hand through his usually perfectly styled hair, leaving some of it sticking up, and Dan doesn't think he's ever seen Bass look so disarmed.

"And Blair...CIA?"

Dan nods.

"Really?"

He can understand Bass being confused. He himself was still a little confused how a member of the UES elite had become a spy. Still, he'd seen it for himself and he had no doubt that Blair was the real deal.

"She's packing heat and maybe she could kill you with her bare hands. It's not that far away from the Blair Waldorf we both know," Dan smirks, knowing this isn't exactly the time for humor, and he's happy to see Chuck smile back, then his face grows serious again as the levity of the situation hits him for the one hundreth time.

"Fuck."

Dan is sitting at the kitchen counter just watching Chuck work through all this information, hoping that he didn't ask the one thing Dan really doesn't want to answer. Hoping he doesn't figure out that his marriage to Blair is part of a plan to bring his father down. That is something Chuck needs to hear from Blair, not from her ex who she cheated on him with. Not that Chuck knows that, but now isn't the time to find out. Dan's jaw aches a little in anticipation of the punch that would surely land there and he rubs it with his fingers, feeling the stubble.

"Dad said she was up to something, said I needed to dig up some dirt to keep her in line."

Bart Bass. Always charming. Always practical. Always willing to stoop to blackmail to control the people around him. He made Chuck look good.

"I came to you because something about it felt wrong. And I know that of all the people in Blair's life, you would care the most about what's going on with her. Even if she did choose me."

Dan cocks an eyebrow in Chuck's direction. Not quite the bastard Dan had come to think of him as. He knows Blair thought Chuck was being brought in on Bart's illegal dealings but maybe it didn't happen. Maybe the younger Bass turned out not to be cut from the same cloth as his dear old dad. Maybe...

"Blair's in danger." Dan finally says. "You were right to come to me."

Dan is the only one who knows the truth, that Blair isn't everything she appears to be. Now Chuck knows as well and the secret bonds them in yet another way, and Dan wonders at how the universe works that they have ended up here, together, fighting to keep Blair safe.

Bass and Humphrey, the world's oddest couple. Two men in love with the same woman, now on the same side. The side that will keep Blair alive. It's epic, the kind of things novels are written about, along the lines of brother facing brother, tragic love, where one person will have his dreams come true and the other person will face the greatest tragedy. If Dan wasn't so tangled up in all of it, he might write a story, turn it into his next great masterpiece. Forget all his adventures in Europe, this was the stuff that made great writing.

Dan is glad that Chuck doesn't ask more questions because he feels like his secret is too close to the surface, waiting to be ripped open, and then he thinks Chuck won't be so interested in helping Blair. Then Chuck might have the blackmail material Bart Bass needs, and he might be angry enough to decide Blair isn't worth protecting anymore. So much hangs in the balance.

"So, what do we do, Humphrey? How do we fix this mess."

Chuck Bass hadn't run a business empire at an early age for no good reason. He was someone who was decisive, and this was no different than a business deal that required immediate action. He was ready to help Blair.

They come up with a plan.

Chuck will go back and keep Bart away from Blair. He has access to Bart's safe, his documents and his computer. He will try to gain his father's trust, get him to bring him in on his arms deals. Chuck will become the spy. If he can get the information the CIA needs he can turn himself into the ultimate witness, and the epic story of son betraying father will be played out yet again. Dan asks if he'll be okay betraying Bart's confidence.

"He's betrayed mine, Humphrey." Chuck answers, "and he's asked me to hurt my wife, and that's something I swore I'd stop doing when Blair returned to me."

Dan winces at Chuck's words and Chucks stops, saying something about this having to be painful for Dan. Dan nods his head in agreement, glad to have Bass misunderstand why his words are painful for Dan to hear. All he can see is how badly Chuck is going to be betrayed when everything comes to light.

Dan will head to CIA New York office. He will find Blair's handler, and when he does, he'll make a deal that will get Blair out of the CIA.

The two men shake hands. It's a deal. Then Chuck pauses and looks at Dan.

"I know you love her."

Dan swallows. He nods. He does love her. That much is true. He doesn't tell Chuck that if this plan works, he most likely has lost Blair forever. He doesn't tell Chuck that Blair is actually already gone, using him, sleeping with Dan, and it's all way beyond fucked up. He just nods and agrees that he loves Blair. That is the simplest thing about this situation, it's the only thing that he's sure is true.

"We have that in common." Dan answers. Then Chuck is gone and Dan is alone again, and he just sits, wondering at the strange turn of events that have made allies out of enemies, the change in the universe that brought Chuck here, put them on the same team, and will probably end Chuck's marriage and break his heart. No matter what Dan has thought of Chuck Bass in the past, he's not sure anyone deserves what's about to happen.

He sleeps fitfully that night, tossing and turning, his head filled with strange dreams. Blair is there and she's running and he can't catch her and he has to tell her that there's danger. Then she's calling out his name and he wakes, yelling into the darkness, terrified.

In the morning Dan wakes up, bleary eyed and tired. He makes coffee and just sits and sips it, lost in his thoughts. After a while he decides it's time to get going. Time to find who is in charge of Blair.

He's not quite sure how he's going to do this, so when he arrives in the lobby of the New York offices, Dan just stands there for a minute as people pass by him, men and women in dark suits, carrying briefcases, and it looks like any other office building. Dan wishes they could all be wearing dark sunglasses or something more stealth-like, something that screams CIA. Finally he walks up to the large, imposing reception desk in the middle of the lobby and clears his throat.

"Um, I want to to talk to someone about Blair Waldorf."

The woman at the desk gives him a blank look. Dan wonders what he was thinking, walking into the CIA, asking for Blair's handler. Transparency isn't the modus operandi of the CIA, so why would this actually work? Could he be a bigger idiot?

"I'm sorry, sir." the woman behind the counter says cordially. "There is no one by that name working here."

"Well, she doesn't really work here." Dan stutters. He's not sure how to explain. You know, that girl you read about in the papers. The one who almost married a prince and his now married to one of the richest men in the city. The one who graces the social pages and is gossiped about by ladies who lunch? That one? Well, she's an agent. And I want to talk to someone about her. Because she's in danger and I think I can help. This is pretty much impossible to explain.

"This is ridiculous," Dan mutters under his breath, more to himself to anyone around him. The woman looks at him blankly and says she's sorry in the way people do when they actually don't care. Dan sighs and shoves his hands into his pockets, his shoulders slumping. How is he going to help Blair when he can't even find the right person to talk to. She smiles at him, her teeth bright white, her smile polite and unsympathetic, then puts a finger up to her headset like she's listening to someone. Dan knows she's busy and politely thanks the receptionist then turns to go when she calls out his name,

"Mr. Humphrey?"

Dan freezes. He's quite sure he never gave anyone his name. No one.

"Yeah?" he says, turning around to face the reception desk again. She is still as blank as ever.

"Could you wait right over there?" she gestures toward a long uncomfortable bench along the wall.

"Sure." Dan says, then walks over to the bench and sits down, his stomach fluttering. He pulls out his phone and texts Bass, telling him that he's having some success. Then he waits. And waits.

The minutes tick by.

Dan is about to give up, to go home and try again another day. He stands up and throws his book bag over his shoulder when he hears the click of heels behind him and a familiar voice greets him.

"Hello, Mr. Dan."

_What the hell?_

Dan doesn't turn around. He just stands there, his head whirling. The voice, it's...he's sure it's... He should have known. It makes sense, but he'd just never imagined that...

"Mr. Lonely Boy?"

Finally Dan turns slowly and although he knows who is standing behind him, his eyes still widen in surprise. She is smartly dressed, a dark suit, her hair pulled back like always, but somehow she looks imposing and professional. Dan's mouth is hanging open and he can't really find the words.

"Surprise." She says, smiling, shrugging. "Sorry you find out this way."

Dan still can't find any words. It's been her all along, the person who dragged Blair into this mess, and he's not sure what to say. He opens and closes his mouth a couple more time and then finally manages to squeak out her name.

"Hello Dorota."

TBC


	9. Chapter 9

"UOP." Dorota says, sipping a cup of tea, and it all seems strangely domestic to Dan. Except they aren't in Blair's kitchen, they are sitting in a small office on some floor of the CIA New York offices. Dan lost count of how many floors they went up and they changed elevators at least once, so he's disoriented at the moment, his head spinning with all kinds of different pieces of information. The office is cramped, with a small steelcase desk and an uncomfortable chair with fraying upholstery that Dan is currently sitting in.

"UOP?"

"Sorry, polish intelligence." Dorota says, smiling at Dan. He has this strange sense that Dorota might reach in one of the drawers of her desk and pull out a plate of cookies or a croissant and set it before him. He's having a hard time shifting from Dorota being Blair's maid to her being Blair's handler.

Dorota takes another sip of her tea. She tells Dan that she had done some minor work for the UOP back in Poland but had left that life behind when she immigrated to the United States. She found a job that, like so many immigrants, didn't use the skills she had back home, but she was good at domestic work and she grew to truly care for Blair and the Waldorf family. She met Vanye, had a family and had all but forgotten about her brief stint as an intelligence agent in Poland.

"Then old boss call me. Ask me to help him out."

Dan's tea is cold. He leans forward and sets the mug on Dorota's desk.

"He tell me that CIA need Blair for a job. If I help them I can keep Blair safe. I say yes."

Dan is trying to digest everything he's hearing. Now it makes sense why Blair was wishing Dorota was there in London. But why was Blair still in Bart Bass' grips, still with Chuck. Why hadn't Dorota gotten her out.

"And now," Dan spits out, angry. "Blair got the intel you wanted and she's not away from Bart Bass, she's still in danger, how are you keeping her safe?"

Dorota blinks and looks hurt.

"I don't make the decisions around here, Mr. Dan."

Dan is immediately sorry. He knows that Dorota loves Blair and that she only wants to take care of her like she always has. It's not fair to blame her. She's one person in a giant bureaucracy with questionable motivations, that sometimes even spies on its own citizens. Dorota cares about Blair but the CIA only cares about taking down Bart Bass. Blair is simply a means to an end.

"What Blair got in London was good, but not enough. They don't want just one deal, they want Bass' whole, how you say, 'shebang'. Blair is best shot CIA has."

Dan sighs. He knows there is truth in what Dorota says. Blair didn't think things would go this far, or maybe she was never really told that this could be a long-term deep cover assignment. When she told him about her mission in London she didn't seem like she expected it would go much longer, thought she would do a few things to get information and then everything would be over.

"Bart Bass is starting to figure out that Blair's a threat." Dan tells Dorota. Her eyes widen with his words.

"But, I just saw her last week and she never said anything."

"She may not know."

Dan realizes that Bart has told Chuck about his suspicions regarding Blair but that doesn't mean that Blair has any idea that she's been compromised. She doesn't know she may need to lie low or be more careful. His throat contracts with fear.

_Fuck. _

Dorota's face is serious, her forehead knit with worry. Neither of them say anything but they are both thinking that the situation is worrisome in the least and maybe dangerous.

"We pull her out." Dorota says suddenly. "We end this right now, find a way to get Miss Blair out, put her in a safe house, enroll her in witness protection."

Dan swallows. He wants to agree with Dorota, to go directly to the Empire, grab Blair and take her somewhere safe. But that would mean Blair leaving everything behind. Her family. Her life. Him. She would be leaving him behind too.

"No." Dan says forcefully. "I have another way."

This is what he came here for. The plan. The one he and Chuck came up with the night before. The one that was going to save Blair and break Chuck's heart, but Chuck didn't know that part.

"I'm listening." Dorota says.

"Chuck Bass."

"What about him?"

"He'll give you the information you need to take down Bart Bass' organization."

Dorota looks shocked.

"Mr. Dan, are you serious?"

"Deadly, Dorota. I'm deadly serious."

He tells her that Chuck is willing to turn against his dad. That he has access to his safe and is going to work on getting whatever is needed to take Bart down.

"But, Mr. Bass as dirty as his father."

He's not," Dan says. "He's really not."

He never thought he be defending that bastard, but here he was, telling Dorota to trust Chuck. It was the only chance Blair had. They had to trust listen to him and trust Chuck, because it was the only way to get Blair out without her having to make major sacrifices. When it came to Blair, they were all on the same side. The side that would keep her alive.

"Okay." Dorota says. "I will talk to boss, see if he will consider Mr. Bass. It could take some time."

Dan nods, knowing full well that time is something they may not have. Bart Bass is getting too close to the truth and if he finds out that his daughter-in-law is bent on taking him down she may end up on an extended vacation in Aruba, and Dan thinks he won't survive losing Blair. Not this way. Not when they have so much in front of them.

He's willing to admit this now. That despite telling her to leave, telling her they were over, they will never be over.

"How long will it take?" he asks.

Dorota shrugs. "Maybe couple days. We'll need to meet with Mr. Chuck. He'll need to get away without Bart Bass knowing."

Chuck is smart. No matter how much more decent he's become, lying and scheming should come easily. He'll be able to slip away from Bart.

"It doesn't have to be here. We can meet him in park. I'll offer to be handler for him."

It makes sense. Dorota is the staff. No one would suspect that she is the one calling the shots. No one would think twice if Chuck was seen talking to her. Even though she works for Blair, there is something about Dorota that gains peoples trust.

"Okay." Dan says. Okay. Even though he wants to grab Blair on the street and take her away right now, he can deal with this plan despite the waiting.

Dan stands up and Dorota rises from behind her desk at the same time. She extends her hand toward him and he takes it, feeling the strong grip. They shake, sealing their alliance.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Dan." Dorota says. "I know you love Miss Blair. And Miss Blair love you."

"Loving each other is irrelevant," Dan says, "not when Blair's in danger."

"I know." Dorota smiles sadly. "But it means something."

She was right. It meant something.

Dan turns and is about to walk out of the office when his phone beeps, the sound of a text. He pulls the phone out of his pocket and looks at it. It's from Chuck. Dan reads the message.

_B compromised. 911. Need help._

He goes cold, his skin pricking with goosebumps and for a moment he can't move. He's frozen, fear coursing through his body, and his legs feel numb, like he can't stand up.

_Blair. _

Dan turns back to Dorota and when she sees the look on his face hers mirrors his. She knows something is wrong. The air crackles with tension.

"Miss Blair." Dorota says gravely, knowingly.

Dan nods. He still can't find the words, can't make himself form a sentence, can't tell Dorota that something has gone terribly wrong. Everything has gone into slow motion, and his arms and legs and lips feel heavy, weighed down, and it takes all his effort to finally say to Dorota.

"She's in trouble."

Dan will find out later that Blair had gone with Chuck to Bart's penthouse, insisting on accompanying him to a meeting with his dad, telling Chuck that she was bored sitting around waiting for him. Chuck had tried to say 'no', but Blair was insistent and Chuck decided he would try his best to keep her safe. He didn't know that she was going to let herself into Bart's office and Blair didn't know that the meeting would be cut short.

Chuck tried to stall Bart, but in the end Bart Bass had walked in on Blair rifling through his desk. Blair had tried to stammer out some excuse but Bart had told her to shut up. He pulled a gun from his suit jacket and had Blair sit down. Blair would have a deep, dark bruise from where Bart cracked the gun across her cheek. Later Dan would trace the bruises, letting his fingers run along the black, blue yellow fading marks. Bart had hit her a couple more times and some day in the future Blair would tell Dan what it was like to taste blood in her mouth.

Bart asked Chuck to call Andrew Taylor and Chuck had agreed, slipping out of the office and taking a moment to text Dan, hoping that he could get there in time to help get Blair out of this mess.

Dan knew none of this. He just knew that Blair was in trouble.

"Can you call in someone, like special forces or something?" Dan asked, looking desperately at Dorota.

"No, we cannot extract Miss Blair that way." Dorota said, her voice serious. "We expose Miss Blair right now, she will not be safe. Bart Bass might decide to kill her right then and there. Miss Blair know too many secrets now."

Blair Waldorf always enjoyed a good secret, and now those secrets might end up costing her life. Dan's stomach heaved a little.

"I might vomit." he said weakly. Dorota pointed out a trash can next to the solitary potted plant in the corner of her bare office. Dan eyed it, hoping he could keep the contents of his stomach from coming back up.

"Mr. Dan," Dorota said in a grave tone, "You need to keep things together now. Miss Blair need you, and I need you."

"Need me," Dan asked. "Need me for what?"

"For plan." Dorota answered. She pulled open a drawer in her desk and took something out. It was a bundle of black cloth and as she unfolded it, Dan could see it was her maid uniform.

"We must create, um, distraction."

Distraction. Dan Humphrey, creator of distractions and scenes. It seemed that Dan was getting expert at being the distraction lately. He didn't respond to Dorota, just waited for her to outline what she had in mind. Whatever it was, he was game.

"Miss Blair must get out of there. If you go and make a scene maybe you can get Blair out without exposing her or compromising Mr. Chuck either."

"But how," Dan asked, shaking his head. "Won't it look strange if I show up right now, right when Blair is in trouble?"

"Maybe," Dorota admits. "But we provide such shocking news that all attention is on you."

Dan knew what Dorota wanted. She wanted him to go and tell Chuck that he and Blair were having an affair, that she had never stopped loving him, that she was going to leave him for Dan Humphrey of Brooklyn. Then Chuck's fist would indeed connect with Dan's jaw, and it would all be over. Was there any chance of Chuck cooperating after learning this?

Dan asks Dorota this. She shrugs. "Maybe not," she admits, "but Blair would be out of there. Anyway, I have secret to expose so crazy that Mr. Chuck may think we are lying and realize we are rescue team. Let me put on my uniform and we go to Bass penthouse."

Dan put his hand on Dorota's arm.

"Wait, what secret?" What could be more shocking than Blair sleeping with Dan in London.

Dorota looks at him, takes a breath then speaks, and what she says leaves Dan feeling like his entire world has been turned upside down.

"Miss Blair. She's pregnant."

TBC


	10. Chapter 10

_Blair will lose this baby too. _

_She doesn't know this when the gun hits her side and Bart Bass is saying something to her and she hears Chuck yelling at him to stop in the background, and all Blair can feel is sharp, shooting pain, and the whole room is spinning. _

_She doesn't know that at that moment the universe has shifted and set on a course where her baby's life will be sacrificed so Blair Waldorf can live. _

Dan has no idea that this baby will not live either. He stares at Dorota, his mouth hanging open trying to digest what she has just told him.

_Blair. Pregnant. _

Shock drives all logical thought processes out of his head.

_Blair. Pregnant. _

It could be his.

Dorota is watching him carefully, and if it's like she is reading his mind because what she says next is the one single consuming thought that keeps running through Dan's head.

"It's not Mr. Chuck's. She said she was sure it wasn't. I'm so sorry you had to find out this way."

Her hand his on his arm and Dan realizes that he's shaking. He thinks about Milo and how it had been really hard but he had loved being a parent. He thinks about how that was ripped away from him. And now, Blair. Pregnant.

"We have to get her out."

Dorota nods, "I know. I've been wanting to but my boss has wanted to keep her in just a little longer."

"No." Dan grits through clenched teeth. "This ends now."

It wasn't just Blair in danger anymore, it was an unborn child, their child.

"So, let's end it," Dorota says. She grabs the black bundle and they head toward the elevator.

_faster faster_

Nothing can move fast enough.

Dan can't stop shaking. Dorota is in her uniform and a town car is taking them toward the Bass penthouse, and Dan wonders if the trembling will stop when he steps out of the elevator and he goes into action, playing a part that could save Blair's life.

"You ready?" Dorota asks as they step out of the town car and walk toward the lobby of the building where the penthouse is. How many times has he been here. The Bass penthouse aka the Van Der Woodsen penthouse, held a million memories for him, from being head over heels in love with Serena to fucking Blair in the elevator.

_Blair._

Dan nods to Dorota. She has quizzed him multiple times on the way over, making sure Dan is clear about the story, the plan. Having him repeat it to her over and over.

Dan will go to the penthouse, angry. Dorota will accompany him, telling Blair that she couldn't stop him, that he insisted on knowing where she was. Dan would tell the story, that Blair was planning on leaving Chuck, that she just wanted to get a copy of the prenup for the divorce before she left. She tried to find it in Chuck's safe but it wasn't there, so she decided to look in Bart's. This might explain Blair's actions if Bart had caught her snooping around. When she didn't show up, Dan thought she chose Chuck again and headed to the penthouse to confront her. Hopefully Chuck would pick up on this and play along, and Dan could walk out with Blair.

If things got complicated, Dan would pull out Blair's pregnancy. It was their plan B.

Dan repeated this one more time. Dorota nodded, looking pleased.

"And if none of this works?" Dan asks as they walk through the double doors. Dorota smiles.

"I have gun." She smiles and fingers her apron meaningfully. Fuck. Dorota and a gun are the backup plan.

"Showtime." Dorota whispers as they enter the lobby. Dan takes a deep breath. Make this good, Humphrey, he thinks to himself. It's a matter of life and death.

"You can't stop me Dorota," he yells. "I know she's up there."

He jabs his finger at the elevator button and notices that the doorman has picked up a phone. They don't have much time. The doors slide open and Dan pushes the button for the penthouse.

_hurry hurry hurry_

The elevator feels like it's creeping up floor by floor. Then it stops and the doors slide open and Dan sees Chuck standing there.

"Humphrey." Chuck says as he sees Dan standing there, "and, um Dorota?"

"I'm sorry Mr. Chuck, Mr. Lonely Boy would not take no for an answer." Dorota says quickly. Dan and Chuck exchange meaningful looks. Dan is wishing he had telepathic powers at this moment, instead he settles for hoping that Chuck will figure this out.

"Where the fuck is she?" Dan yells. "Where is Blair?"

Chuck is a quick study.

"Fuck you Humphrey." he says smoothly, and for a moment Dan isn't sure Chuck is acting. "Blair doesn't want to see you. She made her choice months ago. It was me."

"You're wrong, Bass. Where is she?"

Chuck is about to say something when Dan sees Bart Bass walk up behind Chuck and stand there with his arms crossed.

"Blair doesn't want to see you." Bart says calmly. "I think you need to leave, young man."

A chill creeps up Dan's spine.

"I..I want to see her." Dan stammers, feeling like a little kid in front of the elder Bass. This isn't going the way they'd planned.

"You heard what Chuck said." Bart replies, his tone still even and the dead look in his eyes reminds Dan of a snake hunting its prey. "She's married to Chuck. It's over for you, Mr. Humphrey. You need to accept that and leave. Now."

Dan is speechless, but Dorota jabs him in the ribs and speaks up from behind him.

"Mr. Dan say Miss Blair was going to leave Mr. Chuck."

"She was supposed to leave with me," Dan said quickly. "Today, but she didn't show up when she said she would."

Chuck's eyes narrow but his gaze doesn't leave Dan's face. Dan prays Chuck will keep playing along. He knows Dan and Blair weren't planning an escape since he was in the loft yesterday, plotting with Dan. Plotting to free Blair from her duties at the CIA and betray his own father.

"Bastard." Chuck says and lunges toward Dan. Dan barely manages to avoid Chuck tackling him and both men fall to the floor. Chuck lunges toward Dan again, and they end up grappling with each other, and Dan thinks this feels all too real, fighting over Blair.

"Where is she." Dan manages to hiss at Chuck as they roll around.

"Bart's office, I can't get her out..." Chuck whispers quickly back into Dan's ear, then Chuck is being pulled off Dan and Dan lies there for a moment, stunned a little, then struggles to his feet, wiping his mouth. Security guards are in the room now, and Dan isn't sure how they got there, and they are holding Chuck back and Chuck is telling Dan to get the fuck out of there.

This is entirely not going as planned.

Dan still hasn't given Blair her cover story, he hasn't even been able to see her, and suddenly he is struck with fear. Bart doesn't want him to see Blair. He's hurt Blair.

_He's hurt Blair._

Dan doesn't remember much after this point. Not until the scream. He's yelling, but he's not sure what he's saying and Chuck is struggling against the security guards, and Dan somehow sees Dorota reaching into her apron and he knows they've gone way past plan b at that point, and he's sure that Dorota and her gun are no match for Bart's thugs, and everything is turning into a giant shitshow and Dan can't think of anything but Blair. Blair being hurt. Bart Bass hurting Blair.

It's at that moment that a blood curdling scream fills the penthouse and everyone stops.

_Blair doesn't know that the moment the gun hit her side, her ribs cracked and one of them was broken enough to start bleeding into the space around her lungs. All she knows is that the pain is unbearable and it's not long before it's feeling difficult to breathe, and she's scared and she wants help, and no one will help her. She will also never know how she managed to let out the scream, the one that rings through the penthouse, right before everything goes black. _

Bart freezes at the sound and his mouth becomes tight and pinched. Chuck's eyes go wide and the blood drains from his face. Dan feels Dorota grow tense next to him. Dan screams out Blair's name.

_no no no_

Everyone is frozen, staring at each other, for what seems like an eternity, and maybe Dan can even hear the clock on the side table ticking in the silence, then the entire room is a flurry of motion. Chuck is yelling at Bart, asking what he's done. Bart looks stunned. Dorota is surging forward, telling Bart that Blair is coming with her, and Dan sees that the gun is still in her apron. Dan is looking around, trying to figure out where the scream came from, trying to figure out how to get to Blair. A strange man is running into the room, his face panicked, and Dan hears him tell Bart that Blair has collapsed.

_no no no_

"This is over." Dorota spits out, pushing past Bart Bass and his minions, looking pointedly at one of them. "You, call 911. Where is she?"

Dan manages to say Bart's office and then Dorota is running down the hallway. They push through the office door and stop, staring.

Blair is on the ground, splayed out, her arms and legs askew. Her skin is pale, but Dan can see some red marks on the side of her face, a trickle of blood down the side of her face, she's breathing fast. Too fast. Then Dorota is by her side and shaking her, and Dan feels like he's seeing the room through a tunnel, that everything is moving in slow motion and too fast all at once, and he knows he should be doing something, should be helping Dorota. Then Chuck is there and he hears Dorota asking if he knows CPR, she says something about Blair's pulse and then she's starting chest compressions.

_Blair. _

Dan wants to run to her, to shake her, to tell her that he can't lose her. Not now. Not like this. Instead he stands back, and it's all so strange and surreal. Dorota is counting, pushing on Blair's chest, Chuck is tipping Blair's chin back to administer breaths, and then Dorota is back pushing on Blair's chest.

Two people push past Dan and he realizes they're medics. More push past him and they surround her, and Dan can't see Blair anymore, but he hears the saying things like IV and intubate and defribulator, then 'stand back', and when then they step back and he sees that she has a tube down her throat, and her shirt is open, and there are pads on her chest. One of the medics is squeezing a bag over and over, and another says they have a rhythm, then Blair is loaded into a stretcher and they are running with her toward the elevator, Dan, Dorota and Chuck behind them. The doors slide shut and they are standing there, alone.

_Blair. _

"The car is downstairs, Mr. Dan" Dorota says, her arms going around Dan and he sags against her a little, not sure if he can stay standing much longer. Chuck says he's going with them, and Dan resists the urge to tell Bass to stay away, to yell at him for Blair being in this situation in the first place, and just nods his agreement. They run to the stairwell, hoping it will be quicker than the elevator and in moments the three of them are standing on the street.

_Blair doesn't know that the blood leaking into her lungs will save her life. All she knows is that there are voices and lots of people around her and she feels strange and cold and she just wants to sleep. Everything's a blur around her, but there are two thoughts that break through the fog. Dan. The baby. All she knows is that she wants to tell someone about the baby but she can't say anything. _

They arrive moments after Blair is rushed into the emergency room and Dan wants nothing more than to follow her, but Dorota's hand on his arm stops him, and he watches as Chuck runs after the gurney.

"Mr. Dan," she says and Dan wants to snap at her, to tell her to let him go. He wants to get to Blair.

"They need to know." Dorota whispers.

Need to know. Dan's brain scrambles, trying to make sense of what Dorota is trying to tell him. Need to know...then it clicks.

_The baby. _

Dan runs toward the emergency room entrance, yelling at one the nurses to tell him where Blair Waldorf has been taken. She points to a room with an open doorway and Dan rushes in to find her surrounded by a cadre of medical personnel: doctors, nurses, people doing blood, and the room is filled with frantic activity, then someone yells that they're going to take her to the OR and people are rushing out of the room, and they're pushing Blair down the hallway, rushing past Dan. His mouth is open but he can't find the words, then he yells after them,

"She's pregnant!"

The group keeps moving except for one person who stops and turns toward Dan, his face drained of all color.

It's Chuck.

TBC


	11. Chapter 11

Dan has never witnessed heartbreak in person. Not like this.

He's standing in the emergency room watching Chuck Bass crumple as he digests the words that Dan has just shouted down the hallway.

_She's pregnant. _

Chuck's face is drained of blood and his jaw is clenched and he looks like someone who has had his entire world rocked, and Dan knows that he has. This isn't the way he should find out, not when Blair is injured, not when everything feels so crazy, because Dan has come to see some of why Blair, or anyone else, might love Chuck. There is surprising decency there. This is not someone Dan wants to hurt, and this surprises him.

Dan doesn't move, just stares at Chuck who stares back at him, and Dan thinks that this will finally be the moment that he's been waiting for, the one where Chuck's fist connects with Dan's jaw.

It never does.

Dan starts to walk toward Chuck, his hand held out, the words, 'I'm sorry' on his lips. Because he really is.

"What the hell?" Chuck asks. "Pregnant?"

Chuck stumbles backwards and catches himself on the wall, then he slowly slides down to a crouch, his face in his hands, not looking at Dan. Dan slides down next to him and the two men sit there, not saying anything.

"It's yours?" Chuck finally says, his words sounding ripped from somewhere deep inside. Dan shrugs, not really knowing how to answer Chuck's question when he's not entirely sure himself. There's only one person who can answer the question for sure and she's fighting for her life.

"I guess so." Dan says. It's the only thing he can think of. "At least that's what Blair told Dorota."

Their baby. He hasn't even given himself time to digest what all of this means. Chuck doesn't even ask what part Dorota plays in this mess. Dan hasn't been able to fill him in about Dorota being Blair's handler. That can come later.

"When?" Chuck's voice is pained.

The wall is cool on Dan's back and from their vantage point all he can see are the legs and feet of hospital workers rushing by in their blue scrubs, their feet hurrying across the shiny tile floor, no one paying attention to the two men crouching in the hallway. Dan takes a deep breath and answers Chuck's question.

"London."

Chuck bites his lip and looks away. London. It seems so far away now, like another life, and Dan remembers how happy he'd been for just that one night, how she felt against him, how he'd whispered her name, how he'd told her he loved her. Now London has become something different for someone else. It's become betrayal.

Chuck looks back at Dan, his eyes shining with tears and Dan can see that he's fighting hard to keep control.

"She loves you."

It's a statement. It's a question. Dan nods because either way it's the truth, and after what Chuck Bass has done for Blair, Dan at least owes him the truth. Blair loves him. She always has. She never stopped. But he doesn't say any of this. He just nods.

"Yes," Dan sighs, and he knows that it hurts because he can see the pain on Chuck's face.

Chuck stands up quickly and Dan jumps up as well, moving back, an instinct to get away from danger, and Chuck's fist is pulled back and then it goes crashing into the wall.

"NO!"

Dan can only watch Chuck unravel.

"And us, our marriage?" Chuck asks, turning back to Dan, rubbing his knuckles which are reddened from the impact, "was it..."

Chuck's voice trails off as he starts to realize what he's asking and what the answer is.

"Part of the mission?" Dan finishes Chuck's sentence. He hates what he has to say next because they have all been victim to the mission in different ways. Dan went through the heartbreak of Blair leaving him. Chuck is going through the heartbreak of discovering that his marriage is a sham. Blair's life is in danger. All for the mission. Dan looks at Chuck and swallows then again tells the truth, even though it hurts.

"Yes."

His voice is solemn. It's all been part of the mission. And now they are standing in the hallway of an emergency room, two men who have been on opposite sides, united over their love for one woman, heartbroken because of one woman, and that woman may be dying.

Fuck the mission.

Chuck says nothing. He slumps against the wall and looks defeated. Dan doesn't say anything either. There is nothing left to say in this moment. Everything is out there. Everything has been ripped open and laid bare. He stands there, watching Chuck, worrying about Blair, feeling torn in two different directions, knowing that after tonight nothing will ever be the same, that nobody will walk out of the the same.

After what seems like a long time, Chuck clears his throat and speaks again.

"I love her, Humphrey, you know that, right?"

Dan does know. Even if he has questioned what Chuck Bass defined as love in the past, his actions over the past couple days have shown Dan that Chuck is capable of loving someone enough to sacrifice for them. He has been willing to betray his father for Blair, so yes, Dan knows that Chuck loves Blair. If he ever had any doubt, it's been shattered.

There is one thing left unresolved. One question dangling out there, and it's the biggest question of all, but Dan doesn't know if he should be the one to ask it. Maybe it should be Dorota, or Dorota's boss. Then Chuck answers it without the question ever being asked.

"That's why I'm going through with it."

Dan knows Chuck means turning in his father. The father Chuck has always longed to know, always longed to impress. The one he has spent his life living up to. He's going to destroy him now and all for someone who doesn't love him back.

"I got the information they need to nail him this morning. I went into dad's safe. It should be enough."

Dan lets out a sigh of relief and he hadn't even realized he'd been holding his breath.

Blair would be safe.

_Blair. _

It's like they have the same thought, because at that moment Chuck says her name out loud.

She's somewhere in the hospital, bleeding, and a team of doctors and nurses are working hard to save her life, and suddenly this conversation seems meaningless when the woman they love might be dying.

"I'll find out where she is." Dan says and walks away from Chuck and toward the triage desk. He asks about Blair Waldorf. The person sitting behind the computer looks her up and tells Dan that she's still in the OR, and explains how to get to the waiting room. Dan returns to Chuck and they both head to where they can wait for news of Blair.

It's a long night.

Around 3 am a nurse comes in and taps Dan on his shoulder and he jerks awake to find Chuck is still asleep, propped up uncomfortably in one of the worn waiting room chairs. He actually looks rumpled, making him look vulnerable, like a lost little boy. Dan shoves Chuck's shoulder a little and he jerks awake.

The nurse says Blair is out of surgery and has been transferred to the ICU. Dan can't absorb the details, just hears that she had lost a lot of blood, that she's stable.

It's a long morning.

They spend the next day at her bedside, Dan and Chuck, holding her hand, listening to the machines beep and hiss, watching Blair's chest rise up and down with the ventilator. They don't talk much because at this point everything that needs to be said has been said. They are strange companions in this vigil, knit together by their love for the woman who is fighting for her life.

Dorota comes by. She brings them coffee and sandwiches on thick, homemade bread, cups of soup, containers of sliced fruit, as if she can feed all of the pain away. She clucks over both the men like a mother hen, sitting next to each of them for a period of time.

"Does Mr. Chuck know," she asks Dan quietly when Chuck steps out to go to the restroom. Dan nods. Chuck knows. "And still alive." Dorota muses. Dan smiles and it feels strange.

The world works in strange ways sometimes. Under any other circumstances there would be a brawl, two men grappling for the love of one woman, things had worked out to bring them together, unite them as the most unlikely of allies.

"What about Bart Bass?" Dan asks, wondering what has happened to the man who instigated the events that led them all to this place. Wondering if he will actually pay.

"We have him in custody," Dorota's voice is biting, her tone betraying her true feelings about the man who had put Blair in this hospital bed, fighting for her life. They are both silent for a long moment, only the sounds of the ICU echoing in the room, and Dan knows that Blair is indeed surrounded by the people in this world who love her the most.

"Chuck said he got the information the CIA needs." Dan mutters quietly, thinking that all of this has required too much sacrifice. Dorota sighs and he feels her body relax a little next to him, some of her tension slipping away. There at least will be justice.

Chuck returns and Dorota leaves, and Dan has a few minutes to fill Chuck in on Dorota's role in the whole thing. They eat their food and continue their vigil, minutes clicking by, turning into hours, and Dan wonders how much longer this will go on.

_Blair. _

The doctors come in and they glance from Chuck to Dan, and Chucks says its okay if Dan is there to hear what they have to say, and Dan realizes that no matter what he is to Blair, Chuck is still her husband. He could kick Dan out at any moment, but he doesn't. The two of them get the information about Blair's condition together.

They say words like hemothorax, internal injuries, laceration, blood loss, and finally Dan gets the courage to ask what he's really wondering, although he hates the fresh pain it brings up on Chuck's face.

"What about the baby?"

The attending, a tall man with a weathered face and sinewy arms steps forward and says he's sorry. Dan feels like he can't breathe all over again and his gut twists, and it hurts.

_Their baby. _

Dorota is back later and she takes Chuck's arm and says she's sorry but they need him at the CIA, and Chuck nods solemnly and doesn't argue about staying. Then in an uncharacteristic gesture he steps towards Dan and throws his arms around him and hugs him tightly.

"I hate you, Humphrey." Chuck says quietly. "Don't be mistaken, but now isn't the time. Take care of her."

Dan nods, not knowing what to say.

Then he's alone. With Blair. With all the machines and tubes.

Dan finally lets his head drop into his hands and he cries, his shoulders shaking.

_Blair._

A nurse comes into the room and places her hand on his shoulder and he looks up at her, his face streaked with tears, his eyes stinging. She tells them they're going to decrease Blair's sedation. Dan nods.

The nurse adjusts somethings on the pumps and Dan sits and watches and waits, and then Blair's eyelids are fluttering a little and they pop open and are looking around, eyes wild with fear, and Dan grabs her hand and squeezes it, and Blair's eyes go toward him.

"I'm here." he says quietly. "I'm here, and you're okay."

He is overcome with emotion, and he loves her so much that it hurts and he can't stop saying her name over and over again, and he tells her the most important thing.

"I love you."

She nods her head and squeezes his hand tightly, telling him what she can't say, telling him seh loves him too. There is a tube still down her throat, still helping her breathe, and then she starts to shake her head back and forth, trying to tell him something and she's getting agitated and trying to say something, and Dan knows what she's asking.

_The baby._

"I'm sorry." he says and he watches as her eyes widen with the realization of what his words mean then they squeeze shut and tears start rolling down her cheeks and her whole body shakes, and the machines start to beep because her heart is racing and her breathing is suddenly too fast, and it's all from grief.

_Their baby. _

TBC


	12. Chapter 12

Everything falls apart.

It's not in the way one usually expects, with the pieces scattered on the floor and nothing will ever be the same, although the truth is that nothing will ever be the same. It's just that everything is different and no one can go back to where they were.

No one wins.

There might have been a time when Dan thought he would win, would walk away with the prize, but in the end everyone ends up hurt in one way or another. It the end it isn't as simple as winners and losers, or maybe it's even simpler because they have all lost.

They are the survivors.

Chuck leaves.

Dan doesn't see Chuck again after that day in the ICU, keeping vigil by Blair's bedside. At least not for a long time. Chuck signs the divorce papers without any fanfare or threats. He leaves New York shortly after Bart Bass' trial, tired of the media circus around the conflict between father and son. It's televised and there are stories in the newspapers speculating on the outcome, wondering if Chuck's life is in danger, focusing on the drama and ignoring the heartache.

Chuck goes to Europe. Dan only knows because Lily tells him one day at their weekly brunch, in an almost too casual manner, that Charles sent her a postcard from Sofia, Bulgaria, and Lily says he's been living there, running Bass Industries from abroad. Dan is glad to hear that Bass is at least still alive and not drinking and whoring himself into oblivion, and he hopes maybe he's happy as well.

Blair recovers.

It takes a long time. She's weak from her injuries and deconditioned from spending weeks in bed. She doesn't sleep well, waking up in a panic, crawling over to Dan's side of the bed and curling into a ball next to him as she shakes until the nightmare slips away and she lies there, breathing hard, Dan's hand stroking her hair. She wanders around the penthouse during the day, her eyes sad and haunted, trying to hide that she's been crying, pretending to be stronger than she is, and Dan knows she has lost too much.

So has he.

He wonders if she had known this would happen, that being Blair Waldorf, Girl Spy would require so much sacrifice, would she have done it all over again? Would she walk away from him, from what they were, would she give it all up to save people she's never met, who are a world away, to keep children from being abused and hurt?

Maybe. Maybe it's worth it to her, but Dan doesn't know because Blair never tells him.

They don't talk about it. Never about how she walked out on on him and broke his heart and it was all for a mission that almost took her life and did take the life of their unborn child. Instead she smiles at him and they both pretend everything is okay. They are the walking wounded, carrying their battle scars with them like trophies.

This will all fade with time, but not because the pain goes away but because they will both learn how to live with their ghosts. But Dan doesn't know this either, and some days he thinks Blair might finally break and he really will lose her. She sees the worry on his face and smoothes the wrinkle between his brow with her fingers and tells him it's going to be okay, tells him that she's stronger than she looks, that she needs time. She kisses him on the cheek and lies in bed with his hand in hers and tells him that it's going to be okay, but they both know she is partly lying.

On the nights that she isn't rocked by nightmares, Blair whispers into Dan's ear, telling him she loves him a million times, as if she can't say it enough, as if she's sorry she didn't say it before. He falls asleep with her voice drifting through his head, a lullaby, and on those nights he doesn't dream.

Dorota stays.

Her days as a CIA handler are over and she is back to keeping the penthouse clean and making too much food and clucking like a mother hen over Dan and Blair. She tells Dan that her covert ops days are over as he sits drinking coffee and reading the paper, that she's realized that nothing is worth risking not being there for Vanye and the kids. For a moment Dan sees the same sadness in her eyes and haunts Blair, then it passes and Dorota smiles and says Miss Blair will kill her if she doesn't pick up her favorite Prada from the dry cleaners. More dangerous than Polish Mafia, Dorota says.

Dan smiles because Dorota may be right.

Dan writes.

The journals from his trip across Europe sit on the shelf gathering dust. Dan will revisit them later and they'll produce another best seller, but at the moment he writes out his heartbreak. It's a type of therapy.

He spends hours on his laptop, fingers flying across the keyboard, pouring out his heart and soul, writing out his anguish and his pain, and this is something that will never be published, but Dan must write because otherwise he feels like he could explode.

Slowly things change.

There are some days that Queen B is back in full-force, planning their social adventures, begging Dan to go to Moma or a gallery opening in Chelsea, and then the nightmares are back and the pain is in her eyes and she won't leave the penthouse, but those moments are further and further apart.

She still never talks about the baby. Until one night.

It's not any different than any other night. They finish dinner and Dan kisses Blair good night then heads to the office Blair had set up for him to write in. His desk from the loft is there and the walls are lined with shelves that hold books and DVDs and notebooks. He flicks on a small lamp that makes a pool of yellow light on his desk and opens his laptop, staring at the words on the screen, when he hears a noise and looks up. Blair is standing there, watching him. She is in her pajamas and her hair is down, flowing around her shoulders. Her arms are wrapped tightly around herself, and she is leaning on the doorjamb, her face unreadable in the gray light.

"Couldn't sleep?" Dan asks. Blair nods and he thinks she probably had a nightmare. She doesn't move, just stands there and Dan senses there is some significance to this moment, although he's not sure what it is until Blair finally speaks.

"She would have had your eyes."

_The baby. Their baby._

"She's a girl?" Dan says, feeling his chest tighten. Blair nods.

"I think it was a girl. Our baby girl."

He stands up from his chair and walks around the desk to where Blair is standing. As he gets closer he sees that her cheeks are wet with tears.

"I'm sorry Blair," Dan whispers, taking her into his arms. She shudders against him and buries her face in the soft flannel of his shirt. She is shaking and Dan is running his hand up and down her back, trying to take some of her pain away.

He pulls away from her and looks down at her face, lit by the moonlight spilling through the windows and into the hallway.

"She would have had your smile," Dan whispers. "You have such a beautiful smile."

He leans forward and places his lips on hers and kisses her, sweetly, gently, and it's not a kiss of passion but one that says I will love you for the rest of your life and beyond that. Blair kisses him back and Dan can feel sadness spreading through him, a deep sorrowful ache that feels like it may never stop.

No one wins.

Blair deepens the kiss and Dan hears himself groan against her mouth, his hands going to her hips, and the sadness morphs into a deep need to have her close to him, to take away the pain somehow, and she must be feeling the same thing because she almost growls his name and her hands urgently pulling at his shirt, untucking it from his pants, and Dan recognizes Blair's need and knows if they don't do something they'll end up fucking on the floor and possibly scandalize Dorota on her way to the kitchen for a late night snack.

"Bedroom." he grunts, grabbing her wrists and preventing her hands from wandering further.

"Dan." His name is a plea. Instead of answering her, he scoops her into his arms and kisses her again, feeling her arms wrap around his neck, her fingers tangle in his hair, pulling his face even closer to hers. He walks toward the bedroom, kissing her over and over, Blair kissing him back, and when he finally sets her gently on the bed, Blair is begging him.

"Please."

Dan takes off his shirt and Blair is pulling off her pajamas, and then they are skin against skin and she is rolling herself on top of him, bending over to trail kisses across his chest. Her breasts are brushing against his skin and making him gasp, and Dan realizes that he wants this for the rest of his life. He wants Blair. He wants her happiness, her sadness, her heartbreak. He wants to go to bed with her and wake up next to her, and suddenly he's seized with the urge to tell her this.

"Blair." Dan whispers.

"Mmmmmm." She is running her tongue along his clavicle now and he shivers.

"Blair," he says again.

"Fuck me," Blair leans over and whispers in his ear, then takes his earlobe in her teeth and tugs at it lightly, and if what Dan wanted to say to her wasn't so important, all coherent thought might dissipated at that moment.

He pushes himself up and rolls over, pinning Blair underneath him, putting his arms on either side of her head and propping himself above her with his elbows. Dan looks down at her. She is panting, her face a mixture of need and desire and so intensely beautiful she takes Dan's breath away. They don't say anything, just stay like that for a long moment. Then Dan says what has suddenly become more urgent than sex with this gorgeous woman.

"Marry me."

Blair blinks and her eyes widen in surprise. Her lips part but she says nothing. Dan swallows.

"Not now. But someday." Dan continues. "Marry me. Be my wife and let me be your husband, and we can have those babies, our babies, and we can grow old together."

He knows she's been through a lot. Hell, he's been through a lot. He knows he might be asking the impossible, but he has to put it out there. Blair is nothing short of his destiny. He needs her to know this.

She is looking up at him and Dan sees that her eyes are shining with tears and he knows it's too much, too soon, and he thinks he should have held back, shouldn't have stupidly asked her to marry him, because it wasn't fair to Blair. He should have given her more time, let her heal more, and then, when the time was right, asked her to spend the rest of her life with him.

"I'm sorry..." Dan starts, then stops because Blair lifts her hand and presses a finger to his lips.

"Yes."

She says yes.

Then they are both laughing in a way that's almost manic, and it's strange because this moment was born out of such sadness, but Dan can't stop smiling and Blair's face is happy, and then they are kissing again, and she tastes like her tears and Dan thinks he'll never forget this moment as long as he lives.

They don't get married right away.

Blair needs more time to heal and Dan wants to give it to her. Her bones knit back together, her body becomes strong, and soon no one would ever guess she'd been beaten to the point that she almost lost her life. She goes back to school and starts taking classes in fashion design. Dan grabs his journals off the shelves in his office and starts to actually write his next book. Blair has her first fashion show. Dan's publisher loves his book. They are featured in the New Yorker as an up and coming couple, and Blair tells Dan that she's flattered, but the honor means little to her. Dan buys her flowers anyway because he's proud of her.

The seasons pass. Winter to Spring to Summer to Fall and back to Winter. They slowly let go of London and the CIA and Bart Bass, and the nightmares only happen now and then, and when they do Blair clings to Dan until everything feels safe again. And on the date their baby would have been due, Dan and Blair light a candle for her, think of what might have been, and Dan holds Blair while she cries.

One winter day Dan is returning from a meeting about his third book when he sees a familiar figure walking ahead of him. He thinks he should just turn the other way, but instead Dan rushes ahead and taps him on the shoulder. The man stops and turns toward Dan.

Chuck Bass.

"Humphrey." Chuck says smoothly. There is no malice in his voice and Dan is relieved.

"Bass," Dan answers, like for like. "You're back in town."

Chuck nods. He tells Dan that he's moving back to New York. That it was time to return. They end up getting lunch, and while neither of them talk about that time or that particular night, there is something between them, a sort of forgiveness.

"And Blair?" Chuck finally asks, pain edging around his question.

"She's good." Dan says. It's the truth. "And you seem good too."

Chuck nods and tells Dan that he's good too.

They become friends and Chuck introduces Dan to Katrina, a tall brunette he met in Bulgaria, and Dan realizes why Chuck has been able to return. He's finally found love again. Then they all have dinner one night and they drink wine and tell stories and Dan sees Blair glancing warmly across the table at Chuck, her face full of love, and he knows they have the final piece they need to leave everything behind. Everything that fell apart has been put back together.

Dan and Blair are married in the spring. She wears a simple gown and jokes about the third time being a charm, twisting her engagement ring around her finger and looking strangely nervous. Dan fights the urge to kiss her and tells her that it will be the last time. All their friends are there. Nate and his wife, a beautiful blond from an East Coast political family. Serena, who has just completed her third stint in rehab and looks tired and fragile, but happy. And Chuck, with Katrina by his side, who walks up to Dan and shakes his hand.

"Congratulations, Humphrey."

Dan pulls Chuck in for a hug. No business-like handshakes for them. Not considering what bonds the two men together.

"Thank you." he says, and it's thanks for everything. For saving Blair. For letting her go. For his forgiveness.

The ceremony begins.

It's just the two of them standing on the balcony of the penthouse, their friends surrounding them, Blair looking radiant, Dan feeling happier than he's ever felt before. It was a strange journey getting here. One that involved more heartbreak, deceit, espionage, guns and danger than he'd ever imagined. But here they were. A family of friends. And here was Blair, the woman he'd never imagined being part of his life, the one he'd fought with and complained to his father about, and now he couldn't imagine life without her.

Blair smiles up at Dan and he takes her hands in his. They feel so small but so strong. The sun is low in the sky and she is glowing in the late afternoon light, her hair full of reds and golds. He can't stop staring at her. The officiant clears his throat and Dan startles and little, then speaks.

"I love you, Blair Waldorf. I will love you forever..."

They have survived.

The End.

_**Author's note:** thank you for reading. This story really surprised me because it started out as an action adventure and ended up being almost as much of a bromance as it was about Dan and Blair. I'm grateful to have been able to write a sympathetic Chuck Bass into it, and I really enjoyed the Chuck and Dan dynamic that emerged. And of course, I love myself a broken Dan and Blair who find healing in each other. For me they are forever. _

_Tons of love from me to all my readers. _

_::sophia::_


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